<p>I agree about the rehab too when especially when one is talking about a young person who is a first offender (in that he has only been caught this first time–I do understand that it does not mean it was the first time he has done this) who has a family that will back up the efforts and reach out to the community as well. I say this because this same family will cross the line to fight the law if the penalty is too harsh, and you then have a very bad situation which is how it typically works.</p>
<p>Also on the table and even more important, are those kids who do not have family or any interested adult helping with the process. For some cases, in some areas, (maybe most but I haven’t seen the nationwide stats) those with a court appointed attorney do not fare as well. In such cases, it can become even a worse adversarial position and the chances of rehabbing these kids can be very low. The system has kicked down someone already struggling, and the consequences for that can be quite bad.</p>
<p>I am haunted by a nice young man who worked at a local gas station that was so helpful to me. He was making enough there to live in a room nearby, had a car, was taking a course at community college, always seemed to be up and going. He got into some trouble, gas station fired him, a storm flooded him out of his place–enough things to bring him to a downward spiral, and a few years later, i heard he was in jail. I brought him up in conversation with a former mechanic there, who just shakes his head and says a lot of what happened was just too much bad luck in a short period of time and a bad decision that would have been taken care of in most middle class families, but this guy was on his own and just not able. Things like that really hit me hard, and I so then wish I were a “great and powerful”. Yeah, I’m hurting just thinking about this now.</p>
<p>Really, it serves all of these purposes, though effectiveness varies…</p>
<ul>
<li>Punishment. Vengeance against criminals seems to be viscerally popular among voters.</li>
<li>Deterrence. Perhaps one of the reasons voters favor bigger sentences. But the likelihood of getting caught is at least as big a factor in deterring crime – and the risk of getting caught with illegal recreational drug use (including underage drinking) or DUI is low enough that many people take that chance.</li>
<li>Protect the rest of society from dangerous criminal. But then there is the inconsistency with respect to “victimless crimes” like illegal personal use of recreational drugs (not combined with driving or similarly dangerous activities, or selling/giving the drugs to others), where imprisonment does not really protect the rest of society from anything.</li>
<li>Rehabilitation. Probably what the criminal justice system is least effective at, except for a few minor criminals who are “scared straight” by a brush with the law.</li>
</ul>
<p>Unfortunately, the political processes that make laws and policies regarding crime and punishment often fail to account for the actual functionality of the laws and policies, or their cost-effectiveness (prison is very expensive, so failure to rehabilitate can ultimately make a given person very expensive to society in terms of prison costs).</p>
<p>We have a huge problem here in NY regarding those who drive without licenses. Repeat offenders as in those who are terrible drives whether it’s because of DUIs or because they are just careless and don’t care, doesn’t really matter, these drivers have had numerous accidents, ofthen are no longer allowed to drive in that they cannot get a license legally, and they simply do. Some just have no ids, and around here, that is permissable so even identifying them can be a problem. I saw a whole lot of things in court in Queens. </p>
<p>Those who are hardened multiple offenders are the ones where the system fails. Alot of these rules like Laura’s Law are meant to address those people who are most certainly going to be recklessly driving as soon as they are let loose. To protect everyone, they are the ones that need to be locked up for a long time. </p>
<p>I don’t know what the stats are in terms of the % of offenders that do again at each episode number. But I saw many, many multiple offenders in terms of dangerously driving including DUIs.</p>
<p>Wow this discussion is starting to take in turn towards the Twilight Zone. OP do what you feel is right for your son, you truly know him. CPT sometimes going to jail is a blessing! I had the typical brother in the 80’s; trying beer around 12, drinking every weekend and smoking pot during high school. I told my dad what he was doing but my father always didn’t believe it or thought it was minor. I was really worried about my brother and wouldn’t have been surprised if he died young.</p>
<p>Before he was 18 he and his dumbass friends got caught breaking into a dinner after hours to take money out of the safe (how they were going to open it who knows-they were high). We were poor so brother had to stay in juvie where someone beat him so bad he ended up in the hospital (it was racial but no hate crimes back then). When he woke up he realized that if this was what kiddie jail was like no way did he want to go to adult jail. He ended up having to work for the CCC (forest work) for three years, very hard labor. While working for the CCC someone hit a family walking across the street in front of him. The mother and little girl died, he held the woman in his arms and lied to her about her little girl being ok until she died before help arrived. The driver who had DWI’s on his record took off to a bar 2miles away where the police found him after he had many hard drinks (making his blood test invalid).</p>
<p>Those two major events changed my brother and he dedicated his life to helping others. Got cleaned up and became a firefighter. I’m glad that we didn’t get him off! This has nothing to do with OP’s son but don’t think a parent who “lets” their child go to jail as being uncaring. Everyone comes from different places. My kids know Mom and Dad have a zero drinking and driving rule but we explaine that since we don’t drink we feel any alcohol would effect our driving. I have do not think there is anything wrong with having a drink but be honest with yourself about your driving abilities. </p>
<p>OP whatever happens with your son please question him about his personnel responsibilty- he knew he was going to do some drinking and that he would be driving. I doubt he was planning on getting wasted but if he had been honest with himself he would never had picked up those keys.</p>
<p>“Don’t any of you see the irony, or hypocrisy or whatever, in that you can understand that the OP is going to spend and fight for his son to stay out of jail, even as you believe that the punishment is just? I think that the money could be much better spend put into a fund towards victims of DUI accidents”</p>
<p>No, I don’t see any irony or hypocrisy in that. I want us to have an adversarial justice system where neutral decision-makers get to hear both sides, ferret out the truth, and decide the appropriate outcome. Remember, the government doesn’t really know what happened here – it’s got some evidence, and it hasn’t proved anything. Maybe some of this will fall apart when challenged. This kind of truth-finding system costs money. I’m happy to pay for justice, and I’m untroubled when other people do it. The Sixth Amendment is worth a lot in my book.</p>
<p>If the OP wants to save money, he should advise his son to plead out. Plea bargains exist to save everyone money. If he thinks 30 days of his son’s time are worth millions, then he should spend them. If he thinks the money is better spent on DUI victims, he can leave his son with a public defender (at least in my state, parents do not have to pay for any lawyer, much less an expensive one, and the kid is probably indigent or close to it).</p>
<p>@NCDad.
you wrote: If you had asked me a week ago about DUI laws I would certainly have said that they should be strengthened…Your instinct is always to protect your kid, no matter how badly he screws up.</p>
<p>I think that perfectly sums it all up.
I feel the same way about the laws and punishment as a strong deterrent, but I know, without any doubt, that I would do anything in my power to help my child. Anything.</p>
<p>I am really sorry that you are going through this.</p>
<p>Hanna, there will most certainly be an attempt to plea out. That’s the way it works in these cases. You hire the best lawyer you can who can most likely get the plea bargain deal. Very few cases go to trial. Theses cases I sat and watched were almost all plea outs.</p>
<p>The problem that the OP’s son has, is that as of late last year, the laws were changed in NC so that his case has what are called Aggravating Conditions, one which is the result of law change (passenger is under 18 vs 16). NC law now makes it very difficult and not at all desirable for the DA to change the case so that the kid can plea and not get auto 30 days in jail. Right now if he does plead, the judge has no discretion and has to give him those 30 days. it all comes down to whether or not the DA will want to go through the new process of letting pleading down the case so there is not the mandatory jail, and frankly why should the DA do this when he has the kid dead to rights? His breathalyzer results are right there with his full consent, he confessed fully, the speeding is fully documented, the under 18 passenger has also confessed. What possible reason, unless the attorney has some relationship with the DA that allows some kind of deal, would there be to let the kid go? Also they are fast tracking the case. Laura’s Law hasn’t been out there enough to get a real read on how this will pan out. </p>
<p>This case really is, as I said a number of times, a shooting fish in the barrel, type of a case as most first offender cases are, especially when they involve young people. They are scared, they are guilty, they don’t think and they will just do what the cops say, and it’s very easy to throw the book at them. That’s why I don’t think in the first offender category, particularly with a kid under 18, or still in high school, jail time other than a day or so in the drunk tank when arrested should be meted out. The new law in NC as in a number of cases are zero tolerance, little or no room for pleas, and no discretion on sentencing for the judge. I don’t agree with any of those three tenets except in the cases of offenders who do the same danged thing multiple times, and even then–the old 3 times and you are out rule will snag some case where discretion and judgement should be used.</p>
<p>OP, I just want to add that sometimes, and i don’t know NC law and how that works, especially with Laura’s law, but in some cases, when a 30 day sentence is just inevitable, a judge can substitute 30 days in an alcohol rehab facility in place of jail time. . Sounds crazy, but I’ve seen it done here. Another way that those who have the means can beat the jail house rap. If a dr or psychiatrist will prescribe it, your insurance might cover a goodly amount of it.</p>
<p>Does it really matter whether it’s one or two or thirty days? The fact is that we as a society dealt with all these issues with 16 and 17 year olds for decades and now they are treated as adults and parent buy the outcome. It’s a ridiculous money exchange of royal proportions and not everyone gets the same benefit so there is no “equal justice” under the law and I having been through this to a small degree am totally jaded. This, of course, is an entirely different aspect of the situation and has very little to do with punishment or restrictions or family intervention other than as a footnote to what the $$ “buy you” in an audience with the prosecutor. So yeah, I’m kind of where cpt is on the whole thing.</p>
<p>I’m not saying it matters, I’m just curious. I’m sure the OP would rather minimize jail time if it comes to that. Seems like Paris Hilton was sentenced to a month or more in jail for DUI and served very little time.</p>
<p>I don’t know about how things are handled in NC in the jurisdiction where OP lives, but around here, 30 days in jail can mean:</p>
<ol>
<li>20 days in a regular jail (or a little more or sometimes a lot less), because of time off for good behavior.</li>
<li> Same, but the time is served at an “honor farm” rather than a jail (minimum security, low risk offenders)</li>
<li>Same, but served in work furlough, sometimes at a specific work release facility that is more like a halfway house. (The offender spends nights and weekends at the locked facility, but is allowed out during the day to go to work)</li>
<li>An alternative sentence of 30 days in a residential treatment facility for substance abuse</li>
<li> The same amount of jail time, but served on successive weekends rather than straight through – so the 30 day sentence reduced to 20 actual days might end up being 10 consecutive weekends.</li>
</ol>
<p>I understand harsh penalties for DUIs, but I don’t understand North Carolina’s decision to transfer these cases to the adult justice system. I feel that should be reserved for heinous crimes committed by youth who have little chance of being rehabilitated. As a society we have decided that it is reasonable to have two separate justice systems because we don’t believe that young offenders have the same culpability since they are developmentally different from adults. Implied in the decision to create a juvenile justice system was the belief that minors could be rehabilitated. Their arrest and conviction records were not made part of the public record because it was believed young offenders should be protected from stigmatization that could affect them for life. I would be more comfortable with a 30 day sentence if it was to be served in a juvenile detention facility, not a prison. And I believe the DUI record should follow the minor offender for life within the court system, but not in public records. I also don’t think minors should have their mug shots posted on-line. </p>
<p>Kids are kids and while they should be accountable for their wrongs, they shouldn’t have their future destroyed.</p>
<p>To Cptofthehouse: you have done a very good job of convincing me that these mandatory DUI sentencing laws are a good thing. Without those laws, we would have a 2-tiered system: all of the college-bound kids with parents who could afford to raise a fuss and hire a private lawyer would get off without any jail time, and the low income kids whose parents are incapable of helping them would end up getting the book thrown at them. That’s pretty much the system I saw for other offenses such as vandalism, burglary, petty theft, etc. </p>
<p>Actually, the minimum penalties may work to protect a kid like the OP’s son. The “minimum” ends up being the default penalty and the courts become very formulaic. Without that, you get wide variations in sentences – and a Judge seeing a kid in a speeding car with a .16 BAC and his teenage girlfriend in the car could very well decide to make an example of that kid and sentence him to 6 months or a year in jail. </p>
<p>Hanna wrote: “If the OP wants to save money, he should advise his son to plead out”</p>
<p>That seems to be what the plan is – the OP said his lawyer said that the case will probably be resolved at the first appearance. That means a plea. Because the laws are formulaic and there are so many DUI’s, where I practiced the plea bargaining practices were pretty much set in stone as well. The cases would plead down to less than the original charges, but the judges had pretty clear standards on those. My guess is that the OP’s kid will not do 30 days, because the defense lawyer probably knows he get some of the aggravators dropped with a guilty plea at the first court date. Most likely the local practice will allow the lawyer to bump the case down one level – that is, there’s a good chance that he can arrange a plea deal that reduces the case from “level one” (30 day minimum) – to "level two) (7 day minimum, but the “deal” could be for more than minimum). But reading between the lines of OP’s report of his conversation with the lawyer, I’d think there’s a fairly good chance of a 7 day sentence, possibly accompanied by some sort of additional community service requirement.</p>
<p>To the OP – I understand that emotionally you want to protect your kid – but I think that sometimes we have to draw a distinction between our emotions and rational parenting choices. I’ve just seen too many cases of parents succeeding at “protecting” their kid from consequences while the kid’s behavior got worse over time – and in the end there was a dead kid or a long prison sentence. You are helping your kid by paying for his lawyer, but I think that good parenting also means raising kids to understand that there are consequences to breaking the law and that he is not immune from them.</p>
<p>Yes, it hurts. But it is not inconsistent for a parent to want to protect their child and at the same time also express support for the law. (I don’t mean that you join MADD – I mean that you take the attitude that the law is what it is, it applies equally to everyone, and that it fair and equitable for your son to be treated just as everyone else’s son or daughter would be treated under the same circumstances). </p>
<p>I was a very permissive parent, but I alway told my kids growing up that if they got into trouble in school, I’d back up the teacher and school authorities. I told them there was one set of rules at home and another set of rules outside the home, and outside the home they would have to deal with those rules. </p>
<p>I was a criminal defense attorney, my kids’ father was and is still a criminal defense attorney, my own father is an attorney who did a substantial amount of criminal defense when I was growing up. I think that’s part of the reason why I can’t get very worked up about the idea of a 30 day jail sentence – I and my kids grew up hearing stories of far worse situations, often under excruciatingly unfair or unjust circumstances. When I was in high school a good part of my father’s law practice involved defending young men who were either avoiding the draft or had gone AWOL from the army rather than being shipped off to Viet Nam. Some of these young men faced prison sentences measured in years rather than months simply because they were opposed to war. (Often they had first applied for conscientious objector status but been denied). </p>
<p>Your son will be OK if he looks at this as a learning experience and truly accepts responsibility and ownership of the circumstances. Part of what you can do as a parent is to help him through that process.</p>