Set Up Private 'drunk Tanks' To Deal With Alcohol-Fuelled Disorder, Say Police Chiefs

[interestrateripoff]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/set-up-private-drunk-tanks-to-deal-with-alcoholfuelled-disorder-say-police-chiefs-8823467.html

Privately-run 'drunk tanks' should be considered to tackle soaring levels of alcohol-fuelled disorder, police chiefs have said.

Chief Constable Adrian Lee, the national policing lead on alcohol harm, said intoxicated individuals should be taken to a cell run by a commercial company and charged for their care the morning after.

Launching a campaign aimed at highlighting alcohol harm, Mr Lee, the head of Northamptonshire Police, said the police service should no longer have to be responsible for the increasing number of revellers who require medical treatment due to excess drinking.

Mr Lee said: “I do not see why the police service or the health service should pick up the duty of care for someone who has chosen to go out and get so drunk that they cannot look after themselves.

“So why don't we take them to a drunk cell owned by a commercial company and get the commercial company to look after them during the night until they are sober?

“When that is over we will issue them with a fixed penalty and the company will be able to charge them for their care, which would be at quite significant cost and that might be a significant deterrent.”

A licence to print money? I can imagine there being some interesting arguments about how drunk you were at the time.

[Tonkers]

Depends how much, if it's cheaper then a taxi home I see a great take up for this wonderful scheme.

[TheCountOfNowhere]

The drinkers already pay their share.

I've stopped going to the pub. It's too expensive. On the rare occasional I venture out the bars and pubs in Northampton are dead except for what looks like 16 year old kids then you get a flood of young people at 11 pm all drunk heading out to clubs. I now tend to go to the Wetherspoons pubs for a beer, it's MUCH cheaper and easy to chat as there is NO music.

What is also apparent from the above diagram is how much profit the brewers, landlords and pubs are taking out of a pint.

Edited September 18, 2013 by TheCountOfNowhere

[PopGun]

Yay

So I'm helping to line the pockets of Serco, A4e, school dinner companies, btl slumlords and now privately run drunk tanks!!

I'm beginning to wonder exactly what will be left NOT to privatise after 2015..

[Wurzel Of Highbridge]

Launching a campaign aimed at highlighting alcohol harm, Mr Lee, the head of Northamptonshire Police, said the police service should no longer have to be responsible for the increasing number of revellers who require medical treatment due to excess drinking.

1) No figures given - very strange.

2) I think this is more police attempting to shirk responsibility as drunks must be 50% of their business and the worst kind of customers.

3) The cause of this behavior should be treated, not the effects.

It's nice to go out to the pub here in Ireland, you have everyone from children (supervised) to grandparents out in the pub in the evening having a few drinks and enjoying themselves.

The responsibility for looking after each other is a social one as there are no Guardi(Police) around here. If someone spots the local drunk in the gutter they will stop and assist them home.

What is broken in the UK is the local community. How many here know and speak to their neighbors and others in their local community?

Of course 'Buy To Let' is largely responsible for continuous shifting of people in the local community. People may blame immigration, but if the immigrants are settled and not shoved from one BTL to the next then they would integrate into the community.

[Frank Hovis]

As ever with these solutions where you make people pay for trouble they have caused:

If you are on benefits with no assets and no source of income (bar the proceeds of the occasional illicit activity) then you won't pay anything and can carry on as you always have done. Only the people who work for a living will be hit in the pocket.

[Sour Mash]

What is broken in the UK is the local community. How many here know and speak to their neighbors and others in their local community?

Spot on - this is the nub of all these 'social problems' which are now proliferating in Britain. The anti-social behaviour is emerging as communities and an understanding of one's place in society breaks down. This invariably leads to a decline in person responsibility and standards of behaviour.

It shouldn't be the job of the police or any authority to enforce social behaviour - that should be done by people's peers and other members of society that they interact with. Not a chance of that happening these days as if anyone tries to point out that what someone else is doing is wrong or out of order, they are liable to be threatened or told not to judge/criticise the choices of others.

To be frank, I'm not even sure what the social norms are any more. It seems that anything goes and is permissible. About the only common thread of 'morality' that remains is a sense that children need to be protected and looked after and it's obvious that even that is more and more just lip-service and window dressing.

[tinker]

This has come from the private APCO (Police Chiefs) organisation. I get a strange whiff of directorships and mutually beneficial networks. Of course, if these front-running, engorged quasi-pubic companies (SERCO, G4S, A4E) were only paid by results as seems to be the model, it could be akin to the return of the Press Gang.

[little fish]

Depends how much, if it's cheaper then a taxi home I see a great take up for this wonderful scheme.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2424152/Police-chief-says-binge-drinkers-thrown-drunk-tanks-night-sober--billed-400-privilege.html

It's the mail but they may have the cost right. £400 per stay.That figure sounds familiar - is it because that's the same figure used by car clampers? Just a nice big number?

There are some scary stats here from 2012 when Cameron first started talking about booze buses and drunk tanks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9083642/Booze-buses-and-drunk-tanks-to-tackle-Britains-drinking-culture.html

Will they be pink?

[Saver]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/set-up-private-drunk-tanks-to-deal-with-alcoholfuelled-disorder-say-police-chiefs-8823467.html

A licence to print money? I can imagine there being some interesting arguments about how drunk you were at the time.

why can't the police do their job and lock these people up? I don't think they even need to lock up all the drunks - even a small fraction and they will tell all their mates what happened, and it will discourage it.

[dances with sheeple]

Why can`t the police just tour pubs/clubs and say he/she/they is too drunk, put them out now, and any establishment that continually is obviously serving people when they have had enough gets shut down for say a year? Bar persons know who has had enough, but their bosses are telling them to shovel the expensive shots out to the sheeple, just like the banks did with Liar Loans.

Thinking about that for a second, it is because their presence in a club is likely to start trouble, much easier to mop up/ignore/shove the problem on to a private company. If this went ahead, and it probably won`t IMO, there would end up being deaths in custody of a private firm because some low paid "carer" doesn`t know the signs of someone who needs immediate medical help, or refuses to get it or something. You might even get private firms and drunk tanks being attacked by groups of the persons friends to "liberate" them as these companies will not be seen as real Law and Order. The only answer is for sheeple to wake up and stop going out dressed like the people they see on Geordie Shore and Made in Chelsea, and realise they need to liberate themselves from the propaganda and get some self worth going.

Edited September 18, 2013 by dances with sheeple

[Frank Hovis]

Could MPs claim it on expenses?

[little fish]

Why can`t the police just tour pubs/clubs and say he/she/they is too drunk, put them out now, and any establishment that continually is obviously serving people when they have had enough gets shut down for say a year? Bar persons know who has had enough, but their bosses are telling them to shovel the expensive shots out to the sheeple, just like the banks did with Liar Loans.

Am surprised the police are backing this - surely if they spend 50% of their time with drunk people, it stands to reason that when this duty is removed the police will lose 50% of their work force?

Social responsibility dances with sheeple? Are we 'allowed' to show that?

[dances with sheeple]

Am surprised the police are backing this - surely if they spend 50% of their time with drunk people, it stands to reason that when this duty is removed the police will lose 50% of their work force?

Social responsibility dances with sheeple? Are we 'allowed' to show that?

My gut feeling is that the drinks industry is too powerful, the tax take too important for the government, and the police know this and just do as they are told by government and play along. Floating these schemes is just to appease the citizens who are fed up of drunken a*rseholes taking a dump in their garden.

[Jeremy424]

Seems like a faux-public health story to me. My cynical mind says that this is more about getting people used to privatized 'enforcers' of law and perverse money making incentives. They impound cars, now they want to impound you.

[the gardener]

Seems like a faux-public health story to me. My cynical mind says that this is more about getting people used to privatized 'enforcers' of law and perverse money making incentives. They impound cars, now they want to impound you.

In a FEMA camp.

[Jeremy424]

In a FEMA camp.

Haha. So you support this scheme? You don't think the incentives are perverse? This does look like 'impounding' people and charging them to be released to me.

[TheCountOfNowhere]

why can't the police do their job and lock these people up? I don't think they even need to lock up all the drunks - even a small fraction and they will tell all their mates what happened, and it will discourage it.

+1

If they are breaking the law, arrest them. If the pubs are serving drunk people shut them down.

This just sounds like a the police trying to boost their coffers to pay their enormously high wages and gold plated pensions.

[stormymonday_2011]

Back in the early 1970s drunks were routinely kept in a the local police nick overnight before being hauled before the magistrates to be fined.

The reason that practise was discontinued was because surprisingly large numbers of people died while in custody.

To stop this happening the cops were ordered to start taking the drunks to A&E ( i was actually working in a local hospital when this process began)

This idea being floated by ACPO will be fine until the first diabetic goes into a coma dies in one of these centres and the company running it gets their **** sued from here to eternity.

I am not sure private security firms would think that the risk to reward ratio would make this good business.

It certainly is not the same easy money you can get from impounding cars

Edited September 18, 2013 by stormymonday_2011

[the gardener]

Haha. So you support this scheme? You don't think the incentives are perverse? This does look like 'impounding' people and charging them to be released to me.

No I don't support it.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that it will result in drunk tank press gangs roaming the streets after dark kidnapping everyone they see. If you protest that you're not drunk they'll have you for being drunk and agressive and you'll probably be tasered for good measure. Then you'll be hit with a £400 fine in the morning. No good protesting you weren't drunk as they'll just say that now you've sobered up.

[Vagabond]

Thats strange, I'm sure I already pay for this kind of thing through my taxes. Police time, A&E time, Cell time, all paid for through taxation of which I pay.

Whether its a good use of funds is neither here nor there. once the police start outsourcing some tasks it won't be long before they outsource more and we end up with a private police force with I'm almost sure nobody wants.

Half the problem with drunkenness in the UK comes from pubs and clubs serving to overly drunk people. In many places abroad they will refuse service if you even look a tiny bit drunk.

[Craig_]

Am surprised the police are backing this - surely if they spend 50% of their time with drunk people, it stands to reason that when this duty is removed the police will lose 50% of their work force?

Social responsibility dances with sheeple? Are we 'allowed' to show that?

Indeed. I'm sure they won't mind £11bn being pulled from their budgets...

[stormymonday_2011]

[Mrs Bear]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/set-up-private-drunk-tanks-to-deal-with-alcoholfuelled-disorder-say-police-chiefs-8823467.html

A licence to print money? I can imagine there being some interesting arguments about how drunk you were at the time.

Can't see any govt doing anything like this for fear of alienating the yoof vote.

In principle, though, I don't see why anyone drunk and disorderly enough to need police or A&E time - and drunks are often abusive to hard pressed A&E staff - or a night in the cells, shouldn't be made to pay for the nuisance and extra taxpayer funded work they create.

[OnionTerror]

I don't understand why the police think dealing with violent crime and keeping the peace is not their job.

They've withdrawn from pretty much every other area of crime - white collar/fraud, car theft, break-ins ....because they wanted to concentrate on violent crime (with the standard response of 'fit a lock/phone your insurer'). And now seemingly they don't even want to do that.

EDIT: And I can't think anything will go wrong if private contractors are incentivised to lock people up.

In fact even if they are not incentivised - they'll just take the fixed contract sum and NOT lock anyone up.

Brave stewards at football matches spring to mind.

...and will the police take a cut of the 400 quid...of course they will...who's to decide who's "drunk" and who's not? Would police arrest someone who's a bit tiddly, and just needs a taxi? Would this include drug users, the homeless, well known alcoholics?