It always popular politically to boost jail time for drunk drivers.
But a Kansas House bill that would double sentences for some DUI offenders overlooks a critical component: Jail space.
County sheriffs lobbied hard against the bill, complaining that it would impose a costly burden on their already overflowing jails.
Why didn’t lawmakers listen to their valid concerns?
Sen. Phil Journey, R-Haysville, who sponsored the original bill, told The Eagle editorial board Friday that the House version veered in a different direction. He called it “harsh” and expressed concern that the sentencing spikes would probably require “500 to 1,000 beds just in Sedgwick County alone.”
“It’s all stick and no carrot,” he said, adding that he’d like to see a more balanced bill that includes emphasis on treatment programs and other alternatives that would reduce the number of people driving drunk.
The Senate shouldn’t let this bill pass in its present form.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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27 Comments
I can see where this would be problematic.
Does anyone have the stats on how many DUI’s are arrested in one year?
Jails might be okay to hold DUI’s on a limited and temporary basis, but long term? That sounds like a real drain on the community.
No one wants drunk drivers on the road because the simple fact is – people die.
I think this bill would see a need to implement a BIG tax increase to house and feed these guys.
Why don’t we handle these things on a local basis? Sitting on one’s butt in jail might be boring – but it’s not really hard work.
As far as I know – these aren’t violent criminals that need to be kept away from society – they just need to stay away from the bottle and make better decisions.
Taking a license away for a year from a father or mother, means we may be paying for food for their kids. Taking it away from a college student for a year means we may see another kid turn to a life of drunkardness since they can’t go to school. And sticking otherwise peaceful folk in jail with hardened criminals is bad all the way around.
Let’s get back to the days of the Stockades. Not physically, of course, but public humiliation works wonders.
Let’s put outlandishly-colored jumpsuits that sport a slogan such as “I drove drunk and acted like a blubbering idiot.” on our DUI folks and allow local business persons to hire them for various jobs if they don’t have a job, or let them go back to their regular job in that garb. There are the true dregs of society that might not mind – but how would most teachers, bankers, or businessmen feel about having to wear that to work?
The problem with the current (and this new) DUI legislation – is that the folks who break this law are often just happy-go-lucky individuals that are not a harm to society in any way – EXCEPT that they drove under the influence.
Making the communities house these folks long-term is ludicrous.
Being one of those that saw the effect of the push to punish DUIs in the eighties, I know what often the outcomes and effects on the system as a whole is. To make room in the county jail meant the releasing of often higher crimes offenders, “out sourcing “ of inmates, creative sentencing and creative bond procedures.The system went from the catch and escort home doctrine to kick low grade Felons out to make room to hold someone that was drinking and driving. As any recovering Alcoholic would tell you, treatment is no good if the person do not think they have a problem. Most of the DUI I encountered feel that they are not criminals. To them it is as if they had passed a law making breathing a criminal offense. Their attitudes made them one of the hardest inmates to deal with. Some one charged with 1st degree murder at least in the back of their minds. See that they belong where they are, while “Good ole Jim” just likes to have a drink or two, or three and then go home after a hard days work. The DUI actually feel a kinship to Political prisoners, admittedly some times that is what they are. Getting tough on crime is mostly a familiar refrain during election years.
It can be a hard call, everyone who has a drink now and again will face the real chance of a DUI.I was fortunate, it took damn near rear ending a semi at forty five miles an hour on a motor cycle. To get me to wake up and never drink and drive again. There are some that the epiphany comes the first time they find themselves setting in a holding cell. I have met several that never learn, some of the stories I could tell you would only serve to make you want to get a rope!
A overall toughing of the laws and sentences for DUI actually would do not good. It is the end of the spectrum where the habitual DUI live that is where harsher penalties should be placed. But care is needed, much of what I touched on as to the effect of toughing DUI sentencing on a county jail. Is what happens when the DUI ends up in a state Prison. For those like the suspect that ran into the reporter recently, short of locking him up for natural life or doing something extreme to insure that he and those in that category can never again be able to get behind the wheel. There is no real assurance that they will not drive drunk again.
“A overall toughing of the laws and sentences for DUI actually would do (not) good.”
“Not” should have been “no”.Sorry
I think that DUI laws need to really be overhauled to get at the really dangerous drunks. I know that some folks will say “all drunk drivers are dangerous” but from what I hear most wrecks and deaths are caused by people that are over 0.13 and many of those have been repeat offenders. Those are the folks we need to go hard on. This is what I would do:1. Make a lessor offense of those caught between 0.8 and 0.12 of “driving while impaired” with a straight $300 fine.2. For those over 0.12, first offense is 2 weekends in jail, $1000 fine and mandatory counseling. Second offense within 10 years is 30 days in jail, loss of license for a year and, if caught driving without a license, confiscation of vehicle to be auctioned off by the state. Third offense would be a felony and result in a prison term of not less than 3 years and license permanently revoked.
Oh, and another thing- refusing to take a breath test or BAC test would no longer be an option. If somebody doesn’t want to blow their breath, the police should take them to the nearest hospital and have blood drawn.
All good ideas so far.
Just like “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die”, everyone wants to be tough on crime, (especially Kansas Legislators) but nobody wants to pay (especially Kansas Legislators). Well, being tough on crime is expensive. You want to lock up a DUI; build a jail. You want treatment programs to stop DUI’s; pay for them. No one has ever determined the cost of a year in jail as opposed to a year of treatment program cost. The person that has been convicted for a 3rd. or 4th. or more DUI will NOT be ‘cured’ in a 30, or 60, or 90 day program. A year in treatment might solve the problem, anything less is a joke. To be convicted four times means that the person was caught four times and had driven drunk over seventy other times without being caught. The DUI that is in jail a year will not drive drunk and injure or kill another for one year. I guarantee. So….pay now, pay later.
Let’s get back to the days of the Stockades. Not physically, of course, but public humiliation works wonders. Why would anyone think it would work on DUI drivers?
Public humiliation on this blog has not affected GSheridan in the least.
I think GSheridan’s approach is just plain mean. Just like her.
I recently asked state senator Phil Journey, the cost to house a prisoner for one year in a state prison. As I recall, he said $29,000 per year. I presume federal prison and county jails cost roughly the same.
Remember, depending on which costs are included, the figure for educating one public school student in Kansas for one year is approximately $10,000 per year.
So prison incarceration costs approximately three times the cost to educate one public school student.
I presume the cost of the overnight stay with three meals and snacks is what runs incarceration costs up.
So it would seem to be preferable to require people convicted of appropriate crimes to report to a “treatment center/school” for five hours per day, say from 5 PM to 10 PM, than to serve time within the walls of a jail/prison “hotel.”
Continuing to build new jails/prisons must stop. As an observor of local governments, I have seen new jails/prisons continue to get built over the years. With each new one, comes the public admonition, “This will be the last new one until we get a handle on this.”
I talked to Sheriff Steed here in Sedgwick County about his proposed expansion. The sheriff says this jail expansion will expand northward to the east-west street. He says most of his prisoners are waiting to go to court and for sentencing. I have heard our Kansas county jails are overflowing because of lack of beds in the Kansas state prison system.
So now its time TO GET A HANDLE ON THIS. Somehow, citizens must demand a new direction such as my idea above of a seven day per week school outside the walls for law breakers … complete with orange jump suits.
Another one of those “caring sells” issues… MADD, the most vicious of lobbies, who will stop at nothing to make sure that driving with even the amount of alcohol contained in your body after washing your mouth out with Scope post-brushing will put you over the “legal limit” of, say, .001 or something retarded. MADD is behind a lot of the lobbying efforts to cause these kind of bills, and there are very few people who will stand up and defend the practice of driving after a beer or two for fear of committing political suicide. It’s like the porn issue… not many people will show up as pro-porn to defend adult businesses, but the antis have no shame since their hands are ‘clean.’ They get bills introduced federally that are tied to highway funds. However, for all these histrionics, the numbers really never seem to change, and the number of lives destroyed by the legislation due to lost wages, lost jobs, public humiliation, etc. far outweighs the number of lives saved by the laws. The regulations don’t prevent the action, they only react to it. Those who are seriously gone don’t care whether they break the law or not.
Set a reasonable standard (.13 sounds good) for intoxication, identify repeat offenders, and make a tiered system by which low-BAC drivers get penalized but not destroyed, and hopefully learn an expensive lesson themselves, not a lesson at our collective expense.
I am not a big fan of MADD. While I am opposed to drunk drivers, I think their whole agenda of broadly attacking 18 to 21 year olds for drinking 3.2 beer and lowering the legal limit to .08 have in fact caused more problems than they have cured. The problem was never people driving at .09 or .09. Now they have clogged court dockets with people that drank perhaps 3 beers instead of people that are truly dangerous to others. I think MADD has become more of an abolitionist organization than a true drunk driving organization.
My problem with groups like MADD is the condensing way they treat people, that anyone who drinks is an alcoholic mentality or that a 20 year old Iraqi war vet missing a leg is somehow to immature to have a beer.
The problem of course with trying to fix a certain blood alcohol limit is that everyone is a little different.One person can down a case of beer and show no ill effects. While another can have two beers and be impaired. MADD is one of the first to actually try to change the prevailing stance that DUI was just a acceptable social failing of human beings. When the push to toughen enforcement of the DWI/DUI laws first started, I met several of those arrested that complain that for years they would simply be escorted home or directed to drive straight home. With the warning that if they were seen afterwards that night they would be arrested. BUT now the same officers that use to let them go home were arresting them! Again to them they were not criminals and they often blamed the officers for their own failings.
A little story: In the little town I was a patrol sergeant in like all town’s had the town DUI, he would go out to his girlfriend’s out in the county and get stumbling drunk then drive home. As he would back out of her driveway she would call us and say he was coming. For about two months we (Rush Springs P.D.) would fall in behind him, follow him to his house. This guy actually drove better drunk then the officers drove sober. He was maintaining a single lane, using his turn signals and driving a straight as an arrow. While often the officer behind him was waiving back and forth in the lane as this slow speed parade traveled through town.
The few times the other officers would stop him, they ended up listening to a tearful explanation that Gary could not help himself and needed help in his battle against alcoholism. They would take him to the detoc in Lawton and he would check himself in. The problem was that as a self commitment, he could check himself out at any time. Which he would almost as soon as the officer left and he would call his girlfriend to come and pick him up.
I had heard this tale at least five times, I myself had followed Gary at least four times and never saw an excuse to stop him ( the fact that we would be called and told he was drunk was not allowed in OKLA. as a justification to stop) he just was that good. Then one night I got the call and followed him to his house, he drive perfectly. When he pulled into his drive way I went on passed to the end of town and turned around.But then as I got close to his house I saw him! He was hanging from the pay phone, unable to stand without help. Unlike Kansas, Okla. has a public intox law being drunk in public is against the law.
I picked him up and took him to the station, listed his property, filled out the paperwork, all the while listening to Gary crying about how helpless he was with his alcohol addiction. I finally said “Well Gary time to go!”, he stopped crying and asked “You taking me to Lawton?”. After I told him I was not taking him to Lawton but that he had been arrested for public intox and was going to the county jail. He went from showering me with praise to cursing my very existence. The tears dried and for the next twenty minutes I heard about my wife’s affairs, that my children were all fathered by large Black men and my mother had been having sex with a German shepherd when I was conceived.
We had over 19 miles to travel from city limits to city limits down a rural four line highway at three A.M.Gary’s verbal assault was so intense that for the only time in my entire career I actually consider what in law enforcement term is called a “road side conciliation”. He finally said the one thing that saved him from a side trip to the hospital. “Ya ever heard of the O.S.B.I.?”, which is the Oklahoma Bureau of investigation.I told him I had, he then said he was going to tell on me and my daddy Bob ( who was the chief at the time, no relation). I had moved from Wichita to a small town in Okla. taking a pay cut to accept a job of a patrol officer. The leading theory was that I was a wanted Felon in Ks. and had became a Police officer in Okla. to hide out….Yeah! I started laughing so hard I had trouble keeping my car on the road.
Gary spend three days in jail and the next time I saw him was on the main street. He walked up and shook my hand. He thanked me, the following morning after being taken to jail and awakening in a cell. He realized for the first time he had a real problem. I had done a far better favor then the other officers had by taking him to detox. It must have worked as he did start going to A.A. and we never had a call about him being drunk.
Good story writerdog – i think you raise good points. I think we definitely need to find better ways to address this problem.
Lets look at the first-time offender. He gets 48 hours – generally spent watching TV in the day room and sleeping in a cell. Really no big deal but costs us taxpayers a bunch. Lets try a different approach:
48 hours. (sort of) Report to the courthouse (or somewhere else) at 7AM Saturday morning. Better have breakfast first, we ain’t providing it. Spend all day picking up trash interspersed with AA meetings – with real recovering alcoholics to help. Introduce them to something they might need. Lunch – a baloney sandwich. If I feel generous you might get mustard. Finally, about 9PM (after the 8PM meeting) cut ‘em loose.
Sunday – do it again. I submit that I just ruined your weekend than letting you spend the day watching basketball.
2nd offense: 5 days. Instead of the expensive County Jail use an old motel or something – a barracks setup. Don’t need the kind of security needed for ‘real’ crooks. Now they are incarcerated but I still try to fight the disease. Bring the meetings inside this time; also bus them out to pick up more trash.
What I’m trying to do is replicate writerdog’s story on a bigger scale.
I’ve always favoured impounding the car for as long as a license is suspended.
Interesting idea but what if it is joint with a working spouse?
This discussion is very timely for me.I was arrested Friday for my second DUI in 3 months. I have not yet even been to court for my first one yet. I had been working toward a diversion, but with a second offense that is out. Now I face huge fines, potential jail time, and certainly public scourn.
I can tell you that in the moment of deciding to drink, potential penalties do not come to mind. Of course now afterward, I am scared to death.
I have a professional job. My wife has a professional job. Like most families, we both have to work to avoid losing our house, our cars, our meager savings, and to avoid falling deep into debt.
There is not adequate publice transportation in Wichita, so my wife has to drive me to work every day. To go to treatment will mean one of us not working or finding an evening treatment program. Jail would most likely mean losing my job. Other than for the Executive branch of government 2 time DUI offenders probably are not valuable employees.
I am not a bad person, really. I have a college degree, a good job, a and great family. I am active in my church, I do volunteer work and give generously to charity.I know what I did was wrong, but I do not see how stiffer penalties will benefit anyone.
The bill to be considered is SB35 go to http://www.kslegislature.com only the number needs be entered. The penalties have steadily increased over the last decade. It was originally hb2012 and because the House Judiciary wanted to bypass the committee process in the Senate they amended it into a bill, one that I wrote, that had already passed the senate. This bill is all stick and no carrot. hard to modify behavior with solely negative reinforcement. There will be no end to the increases in penalties in the future. Saying no to this is as politically smart as doing the same with sex offenders. While there is some evidence to support the position ie most fatalities w/dui offenders are over .15 perhaps reducing those below and modifing current law for over .15 and refusing would be a more proportinal and smarter alternative. Getting them to stop drinking should be the goal that is a very close second to the punishment of the law.
Hi Phil, how ya doing? Been a long time!
State Senator Phil Journey: I don’t know if you understand.
Sedgwick County and Wichita City governments will be spending some $300,000,000.29 (rapidly approaching 1/3 billion dollars) to build a super-sized ice hockey rink downtown arena. Never mind that no ice hockey team nor any other professional sports team nor any thing else has agreed to use the albatross downtown arena.
Its known behind the scenes that the primary purpose of this “white elephant” arena is to guide attendees in the front door and out the back into OLD TOWN for an evening of eating and drinking, its hoped mostly drinking.
Then stagger out the back door of Old Town directly into an idling, waiting Bureau of Alcohol/Tobacco (BAT) van. Then only a short ride to Sheriff Steed’s enlarged downtown jail and payment of a substantial fine.
All because three current Sedgwick County Commissioners … David Unruh, Tom Winters and Tim Norton … are spending our hard earned tax money to provide taxpayers a place to have fun.
“Interesting idea but what if it is joint with a working spouse?”
Then if the working spouse wants to keep working, he or she had better keep the keys out of the hands of their suspended spouse. The law for suspended/revokes should be “you use it, you lose it” when it comes to cars. Also, I don’t know the law in Kansas now but down here they passed a new law in that anybody without a valid Georgia license cannot buy or renew plates here.
HiThe issues expressed by my self and the Editorial Board were concerns. I believe the real goal should be to reduce drunk driving not just punish after the fact. Reducing repeation of such stupid and ignorant behavior requires more than a jail sentence. After working on 60,000 criminal and traffic cases It Is Apparent that they need treatment and the ability to continue their lives without presenting a continuing danger to society. If they get out of jail without taking corrective action it is just time to celebrate. While there is certainly evidence of increased accident when the defendant is over .15 BAC there is no prevention in jail after the wreck. I will continue to work on the issue. There are some new devices that show promise. While it is too early to discuss them in detail. I believe there may be some innovative alternatives to throwing away the key.Yours trulySenator Phil Journey
Phil – with your court-appointed background I think you bring a realistic perspective to this. Best of luck putting something together that will work. I’d be interested in kicking around some ideas with you ‘off-blog’
You may be a ‘conservative Republican’ and me a ‘liberal Democrat’ but there just might be some common ground. ;^)
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