Bracelets working as DWI deterrent
Alcohol detectors surpassing hopes
Authorities a year ago started putting ankle bracelets on chronic drunken drivers to tell if they have had a drink.
Now the initial results are in, and the experiment has worked better than judges and anti-DWI advocates expected.
“We’ve gotten much better results than we dreamed,” said Buffalo City Judge Patrick M. Carney, who oversees the Erie County cases.
None of the 61 offenders was arrested again for drunken driving during the program’s first year in Buffalo and Niagara Falls courtrooms. Only a handful tampered with the monitoring device or were caught consuming alcohol, according to a preliminary report.
The report found that offenders:
• Tampered with the bracelets or failed to show up in court six times.
• Failed four drug tests out of 215 given.
• Fully passed unannounced breath tests during probation home visits.
• Showed up at 95 percent of 1,007 scheduled individual treatment visits and 2,420 group counseling sessions.
• Attended 3,330 support group meetings sponsored by Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous or some other group.
More cities are in line for the program next year.
The program is scheduled to expand into Lackawanna, Tonawanda and Lockport by early next year. And by the end of 2009, the program should be running in Jamestown, Dunkirk and Batavia, said Jeffrey D. Smith, the principal court analyst for the 8th Judicial District.
Smith, working with others, secured the grants that made the local courts the first in New York State to use the devices.
All of the offenders have been convicted of a felony DWI. Wearing the ankle bracelet doesn’t reduce their charges, but gives them a chance to stay out of prison.
“We’re making a bigger impact on community safety” than if the felony offenders were simply sent to prison, said Niagara Falls Chief City Judge Mark A. Violante, who handles more than a dozen Niagara County cases.
The judges, as well as others involved in the program, credit the intense supervision that accompanies the ankle monitors.
In Buffalo, offenders show up to court two or three times a week to be tested, and they appear before Carney at least once a week.
They’re required to see a therapist and attend group self-help sessions several times a week, in addition to meeting with their probation officers.
The Erie County offenders appear before Carney on Wednesday afternoons.
During a recent session, the judge encouraged some offenders.
“Don’t get down on yourself. You can get through this,” he told a man who was days away from entering an in-patient treatment center.
Another offender was about to have his ankle bracelet removed because he completed six months without any problems.
But unlike Drug Court, another specialty court, there is less sentiment or emotional outpouring in Carney’s DWI Court.
“We don’t hug. We don’t clap. We just say congratulations,” he said to the offender.
The device, called a secure continuous remote alcohol monitor, or SCRAM, is the key component of Carney and Violante’s DWI courts.
The monitor, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, measures alcohol use through the skin.
The device takes a reading at least once every hour, and as often as once every 20 minutes. It vibrates when the reading is taken, providing offenders a regular reminder they’re being monitored.
Once a day, the person wearing the monitor must be near a phone modem so that this data can be uploaded to the computer network that operates the program.
A $301,170 grant — federal money funneled through the state — paid for 60 monitoring devices and the operation of Erie County’s new DWI Court.
A second grant of $290,000 paid monitoring fees and for more equipment, bringing the number of ankle bracelets to 70. Sixty-one are currently in use, all but a half-dozen or so worn by men, Smith said.
A third grant will help pay for expanding the program into other communities. The program will be self-sustaining after the grants as the courts pick up some costs and the DWI offenders pay monitoring costs, Smith said.
Offenders in the program today live in 19 cities and towns, with just under one-third from Buffalo.
The program is open to felony offenders who have been convicted of DWI, so long as they have not caused a death or injury in an accident, and who have no prior record of any violence, Smith said.
Nearly 100 have participated in the DWI Court program since it started last June.
In the past year, judges put a handful of offenders in jail for three to seven days for the tampering.
Judges admonished four others for missing treatment.
“We make it very clear and simple for them. If there’s alcohol in your system, you’re responsible for it. And you will be sanctioned,” Carney said.
The judges, however, won’t automatically boot from the program someone caught drinking.
Carney said he will put an offender in jail for three days if caught drinking or tampering with the device for the first time. A second violation will mean 10 days in jail and 28 days at an in-patient treatment center. Anyone caught a third time will be sent to prison to begin serving their sentence.
Not everyone was convinced that the program would work.
In fact, the Erie County Probation Department’s DWI Unit didn’t even know the court’s DWI staff existed, and that generated some early distrust.
However, after establishing communication, everyone began working together, said Nancy Lauria, a probation supervisor who oversees a case-load of some 425 high-risk DWI offenders.
Despite the rocky start, everyone is on the same page and working toward a common goal: holding defendants accountable and reducing the number of DWI arrests, she said.
“Most of the time they’re held accountable,” Lauria said of offenders. “That’s what we like. Judges don’t put up with any nonsense. They’ll put them in jail for a day or two the first time and then the sanctions will increase with additional violations.”
John F. Sullivan, project coordinator for Erie County’s STOP-DWI program, also likes what he sees of the program.
Sullivan’s support is important, because his anti-DWI program has garnered statewide notice over the years for being ambitious and effective. He has also consistently urged prison terms for those who have repeatedly been arrested for drunken driving.
“My initial impression was it was simply another last chance for our worst offenders, an additional chance to stay out of jail, which I didn’t favor,” Sullivan said. “But it’s so intrusive, the program is able to look after them, even if they’re not in jail, in an effective way so they’re not drinking and driving.”
The report was prepared by Richard Washousky, associate vice president of academic affairs at Erie Community College and president of Recovery Solutions Research and Develop - ment.
