Last week's sitting saw a couple of novel bits of law. The first was an application for a Domestic Violence Prevention Order. The application has to be approved by at least a Superintendent then put before the court as a civil matter. We have to be satisfied that the respondent has either assaulted the person concerned or is likely to do so. The Order includes ejecting the respondent from the home, so it is pretty draconian.
The police files were meticulously prepared, running to a couple of hundred pages of A4. The Order can be no longer than 28 days, presumably to buy time while a County Court order can be sought.
The other thing that was new to me was a pilot to fit alcohol abusers with a tag that detects via a transcutaneous sender whether there is alcohol in the blood. This makes it practical to impose an order to abstain from alcohol - that might prove to be very useful.
There is a self-promoting transdermal alcohol bracelet industry (sometimes acronym SCRAM). Recommend ask for precise validation of the proferred technology before accepting its evidence. Low levels of alcohol can be normal metabolites (see the evidence re: tube train driver at the Moorgate disaster), which although very low can cause false positive violation accusations. Perfume and certain drug products can also generate small amounts of detectable ethanol using these devices. Lastly, if it is drinking and driving that we are trying to prevent, and if the miscreant was not driving, then why should s/he not enjoy a pint ?
ReplyDeleteDrinking and driving is not the only likely offence, but rather any offence where alcohol is a factor.
DeleteMany cases of Criminal Damage or Public Order fall into this wide definition.
Whether the alcohol tag will prove much more use the the Drink Banning Order I think is rather doubtful.
ReplyDeleteVery few of the latter were ever imposed, not least because they could not (and cannot) be imposed on those dependent upon alcohol. We live in hope, however.
I should add that most US jurisdictions are finding that SCRAM is reporting tamper incidents at a rate of about 95%, which is also hard to verify.
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