Imagine for a moment that you are the provincial government.
You have a serious problem that you must address: a significant number of people continue to drive while intoxicated. How do you deal with it? What’s your drinking solution?
In addition you have a number of confounding and frustrating impediments. The federal government is responsible for determining what is a criminal offence and writing the criminal law. But you, as the provincial government, must pay for the investigation, the prosecution and the courts. And it seems no matter how much effort you put into dealing with the problem, drinking and driving persists and may in fact have gone up. So what do you do?
It is truly perplexing. It is a simple fact that drinking and driving is extremely dangerous and drivers who have been drinking pose a tremendous threat to public safety. It is trite that everyone knows it and understands the threat, but people still drink and drive. Although there has been a lack of education campaigns in the last few years, everyone knows the dangers of drinking and driving. Yet people still do it.
You can invest in broad public education, but so far that has not accomplished anything near what you need. Again, you are the provincial government and part of your job is to protect people in relation to the roads. What other ways can you deal with the problem?
You need to recognize that part of the problem is that the federal government’s criminal laws have worked against you. To try and deter people from drinking and driving, the federal government has made the punishment harsh and inflexible. The hope is that individuals will be deterred from drinking and driving because the threat of punishment. The problem is that, as it turns out, harsh punishment does little to deter people from driving drunk. It does, however, make many people empathize for individuals facing this punishment.
If nothing is damaged, nobody is hurt and it is a first-time thing, it seems extreme to punish a person with a criminal record, harsh fines, etc. And what if they were innocent and were nevertheless convicted? And besides that, many people have made the same mistake at some point in their personal history without having been caught.
A criminal conviction for impaired driving will usually stop a person from becoming a doctor, medical scientist or police officer. Many people who are apprehended have made the mistake on just the one occasion. If they did no harm, should they be so harshly punished?
So there is some empathy for drinking drivers and it boils down to this: few people in the justice system agree that the punishment should be so harsh and lack flexibility.
Would we all have this amount of empathy if the punishment was less severe? Probably not. We all want people to learn the lesson and never drink and drive again. And we would like to stop people from doing it in the first place. But harsh punishment does not deter and rather it creates empathy for people arrested for impaired driving. So harsh punishment has backfired over time.
Harsh punishment has been the mantra of the main lobby group. This well-funded, well-meaning organization has pressured governments at all levels to implement harsh punishment. At each step, trying to solve this puzzle, you must remember that if you appear to be relaxing punishment in any way, they will be very critical of you.
It is interesting to note that the lobby group has indirectly exacerbated the problem. But you cannot tell them. That is also part of your conundrum.
So the federal government writes the laws and you, as the provincial government, must pay for them. And you, as the provincial government, must protect people from drunk drivers. And you cannot appear to be making the punishment less onerous. And you know that harsh and inflexible punishment is ineffective, costs a bundle and makes many people sympathetic for many of the people who have been arrested.
You have other things to consider in your deliberations. Remember that the money you use to prosecute drunk drivers cannot be used for hip surgeries, or to hire more professors, or to ensure all children live in a safe and loving home.
You also need to remember that offenders need to be re-integrated — they are the citizens of your society, and that a criminal conviction will almost always result in the person not accomplishing as much with their life. A criminal record is a life sentence. And so the conviction will almost always cause a loss of opportunity and productivity. And the person may simply learn to hate the society and inflexible justice system.
So this is your intractable problem. Do you have a solution?
The Government’s solution was the Immediate Roadside Prohibition scheme.
We are very critical of the IRP scheme. We think it was a disgusting way of approaching the problem particularly because in our view the scheme is unfair, unjust and ultimately ineffective in deterring people from drinking and driving. (Remember, the numbers actually went up) We also think that, for these reasons, there was more empathy toward those who were apprehended and a consequent angry backlash against the Government.
Still, one thing is very important to note: the Government has been trying to deal with a seemingly intractable problem. It is a gigantic problem that they are obliged to address. So although we are critical of the scheme, the implementation, the results and the consequent degradation of our rights and potentially our justice system, we recognize the difficult problem facing the Government.
We will discuss some of our ideas for a fair system to deal with the problem of drinking and driving here on our blog in the coming weeks. We’re looking for a drinking solution. But we could use some help.
Our focus is deterrence and rehabilitation. If you have any suggestions, send us an email with the word “suggestion” in the subject line. We would be happy to hear from you.