Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirement - UPDATE

A short while ago we reported on Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirements. These are requirements that can be attached to Community Orders and Suspended Sentence Orders and require the person subject to them to abstain from consuming alcohol for a period of up to 120 days.

Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirements have now been rolled out across the country and can be imposed by any court making a Community Order or Suspended Sentence Order providing the Secretary of State has notified the court that facilities exist in their area to implement the requirement.

Before a court can impose the requirement it must be satisfied that the following four conditions are met:

1. Consumption of alcohol by the offender is an element of the offence before the court OR consumption of alcohol by the offender was a factor that contributed to the commission of the offence.
2. The defendant must not be dependent upon alcohol.
3. If the court imposes an alcohol treatment requirement it must not impose an Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirement as well.
4. The court has been notified by the Secretary of State that arrangements for monitoring of the kind to be specified are available in the local justice area.

If you are facing the imposition of an Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirement you should be aware that it is monitored by an ankle tag that you cannot remove and will require you to be at home twice a day for the tag to upload the information it collects to the monitoring company. This will mean that the requirement is unsuitable for anybody who plans to work or spend time away from home during the period of the requirement. In effect, the requirement will mean that you are unable to take holidays or travel away from home for more than a few hours per day without breaching the Order imposed upon you.

Therefore, it is important that any issues like this are raised with the court before the requirement is imposed.

If you are facing court and would like advice on this or any other aspect of motoring law then do not hesitate to contact Nick Diable at London Drink Driving Solicitor on 020 8242 4440.

Recent case: drunk in charge

Sleeping a night out off in your car can cause you a lot of trouble

Our client, Alun, was accused of being drunk in charge ofa motor vehicle after he was found sleeping in his car at 8am. Alun had no qualms about admitting he had been drinking and was likely to be over the drink driving limit. He was arrested and at the police station provided a specimen that showed he had 45μg of alcohol in 100ml of breath – he was thus 10μg over the drink driving limit.

Alun explained to police that he had been out at various clubs and had taken a taxi home. He said that he had attempted to show the police officer the taxi receipt but the officer refused to look at it. Alun was locked out of his home as he had lost his front door key while out and so decided to sleep in his car – when searched no house key was found but Alun was directly outside his own front door.

Despite him being a few feet away from his home, the police decided to charge Alun with being drunk in charge. So, he called the London Drink Driving Solicitor for help. He told us that he attempted to call his brother in the night to get his spare key but his brother did not answer – telephone records to prove this were produced. Alun told us that his brother would have brought the keys to him, which is exactly what happened when the police released him. We advised him that he had a full defence to the allegation as there was no likelihood of his driving – this is known as the “statutory defence”.

We prepared Alun’s case by obtaining expert evidence to show when Alun would have fallen below the drink driving limit and witness statements from his partner, who had been away on holiday, to show when she would have arrived home. We also took a statement from Alun’s brother confirming that he had received two missed calls and some WhatsApp messages from his brother while he had slept. Alun’s brother said that had he answered the calls he would have taken the keys to Alun and that is what he did do when Alun called him after being released by the police.

We also obtained copies of the police interview with Alun and prepared a transcript to show that the comments Alun made in interview did not reflect the summary prepared by the police.

Once everything was prepared, we wrote to the prosecution serving our evidence upon them and asking that they discontinue the case against Alun. They reviewed the material and discontinued the prosecution the week before Alun’s trial was due to take place.

Alun was very pleased and said that the result as not a surprised as, “… I was very confident that we were well prepared”.

If you require expert legal advice for being drunk in charge ofany other offence involving alcohol and motor vehicles, then do not hesitate to call London Drink Driving Solicitor on 020 8242 4440.

Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirement

Courts can ban you from drinking alcohol

THERE IS AN UPDATE TO THIS POST.

Back in 2012 Parliament passed a law called the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act 2012. This made a lot of changes, very few of them to the benefit of people accused of a crime.

Among the many things LASPO did was to introduce Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirement to England and Wales as part of a Community Order or Suspended Sentence Order. The idea of compulsory sobriety schemes comes from the USA where they are used as a way to tackle high level alcohol related crime, such as drink driving and violence. The British model is based on one used in South Dakota but with some differences. There the alcohol abstinence order is paired with education aimed at changing an offender’s behaviour. In Britain, the alcohol abstinence order will not be accompanied by any particular education scheme. You might think that opting out of the cost of education is doing the job on the cheap and thus far less likely to be as successful as that in South Dakota, but we couldn’t possibly comment.

Before a court imposes an Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirement they must establish that the defendant satisfied four conditions:

1.       Consumption of alcohol by the offender is an element of the offence before the court OR consumption of alcohol by the offender was a factor that contributed to the commission of the offence.

2.       The defendant must not be dependent upon alcohol.

3.       If the court imposes an alcohol treatment requirement it must not impose an Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirement as well.

4.       The court has been notified by the Secretary of State that arrangements for monitoring of the kind to be specified are available in the local justice area.

We have emphasised the words “by the offender” because experience suggests there will be some prosecutors and some courts who will attempt to impose one of these orders where the defendant was not drinking but others were.

Once satisfied that the four conditions are met the court can impose an Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirement that lasts for a maximum of 120 days. The order will require an offender to abstain from consuming alcohol throughout a specified period or prevent him consuming so much alcohol that the level of alcohol in his body rises above a certain level to be specified in the order. To enforce this, the defendant will be required to submit to monitoring of his alcohol level.

The court can impose exceptions, although it is not clear in what circumstances they would be – perhaps a court might allow you a drink for your birthday.

It should also be noted that LASPO defines alcohol to mean “anything containing alcohol”. This would seem to include chocolate liqueurs and food prepared using alcohol.

Currently, these orders are only available to courts in the South London Justice Area – think Camberwell Green Magistrates Court – but you can expect them to be rolled out across the country very soon.

We have noticed that the Metropolitan Police now make a standard request for an Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirement to be imposed on everybody they charge with drink driving regardless of whether that person is appearing in court within the South London Justice Area. This is a very strong suggestion that, once available elsewhere, the police and prosecutors will routinely ask courts to impose Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirements as part of the sentence.

If you are facing court and would like advice on this or any other aspect of motoring law then do not hesitate to contact Nick Diable at London Drink Driving Solicitor on 020 8242 4440.