New developments in 24/7 Sobriety
Saving Lives and Reducing Crime: Insights from Peer-Reviewed Studies of 24/7 Sobriety and Ideas for Future Research
online.ucpress.edu/fsr/article/36/4/201/200604/Combining-Frequent-Alcohol-Testing-with-Swift
Other reviews have grouped 24/7 with Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) and derivative programs as a category of interventions described by Kleiman (2014) as “Swift, Certain, and Fair” (SCF). Yet there are some important differences between 24/7 and HOPE. The 24/7 program focuses predominantly on alcohol-related criminal offenses and is more “certain” than HOPE, the latter relying on randomized testing rather than mandatory high-frequency testing. Larkin (2015) describes these SCF programs as, “sensible, humane, and effective mechanisms for dealing with substance abuse and crime.” More recently, in a review of criminal legal practices that promote desistance from crime, Doleac (2022) frames 24/7 as evidence that programs which prioritize increasing the perceived probability of punishment can be effective deterrents. Cullen and colleagues (2018) and Pattavina and colleagues (2023) find the evidence of SCF program effects to be to mixed at best, but both reviews include a single peer-reviewed 24/7 study in their evidence base, misclassify the research designs, and do not include in their reviews other extant peer-reviewed evaluations of 24/7.4 Midgette and colleagues (2023) note that while the body of evidence on 24/7 specifically is promising, there is still much to learn about implementation of SCF programs, noting we do not yet know which components and design choices are most important.
Policymakers are looking for solutions: Q&A with Greg Newburn of the Niskanen Center
niskanencenter.org/the-niskanen-center-applauds-u-s-house-introduction-of-the-sober-act-2
congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/9390
What are some criminal justice interventions that Niskanen supports?
One that really stands out is a bill called the SOBER Act, which we have been working on with Rep. Duffy Johnson, Republican of South Dakota. Alcohol abuse creates about $80 billion of social harm annually, just in terms of the crime it causes. One out of every four federal prisoners meets the definition for alcohol abuse disorder, and one in three at the state level. There’s also a huge social cost in the way we punish crimes of alcohol abuse. The SOBER Act would expand an existing federal grant to help states implement a program called 24⁄7 Sobriety. That program was developed in South Dakota some time ago to address repeat DUI offenders, and it’s rooted in the theoretical model of “Swift, Certain, and Fair” sanctions. The basic idea is that if someone is on community supervision for an alcohol-related crime, the judge places them into the 24⁄7 Sobriety program and they are not allowed to drink alcohol. They do a twice-a-day breathalyzer test at a law enforcement agency. If they pass the test, they go home. If they fail the test, they immediately receive a very modest sanction — it could be a day or two in jail. But the point is that the sanction happens immediately, every time they fail. 24⁄7 Sobriety has now been studied extensively by the RAND Corporation and others, and it shows substantial benefits in reducing repeated DUI arrests — and even domestic violence arrests — at the Co. level. Niskanen was persuaded that this was a program that deserved to be scaled up and implemented nationwide. We found that a lot of practitioners were interested in starting 24⁄7 Sobriety programs, but they didn’t have the resources to do it. The SOBER Act is an effort to have the federal government help states launch programs. If Congress passes the bill, it could be a game-changer in terms of reducing victimization and keeping people out of prisons and jails. It’s a perfect example of Niskanen’s mission and method.
What’s unique about Niskanen’s vision of criminal justice reform?
We believe public safety and social justice are complementary and mutually reinforcing. There are concrete ways that we can protect public safety, create a just and legitimate criminal justice system, prevent violence, minimize crime, and reduce substance abuse. We can deliver sanctions for criminal behavior swiftly, predictably, and humanely, while also ensuring respect and rehabilitation for people along the way.
An Evaluation of 24/7 Sobriety Program Implementation, North Dakota, 2001–2015
icpsr.umich.edu/web/NACJD/studies/37369/versions/V1
In this study, the research team examined the implementation of the 24/7 Sobriety program in South Dakota, Montana, North Dakota, Jacksonville (Duval County), Florida, and Yavapai County, Arizona. The researchers sought to answer questions about the program’s mechanics and effectiveness across several states, and to illuminate what aspects of program delivery are central to achieving outcomes that are relevant to criminal justice researchers and practitioners, such as recidivism, public safety, and alternatives to incarceration. This multi-site, mixed-methods evaluation consisted of secondary analysis of administrative program data and arrest records from North Dakota, case studies of pilot programs in Jacksonville and Yavapai Co. involving stakeholder interviews and on-site observations, and secondary analysis of breathalyzer test results from South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana.
This is a very weird moment in the history of drug laws (podcast)
nytimes.com/2024/05/10/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-keith-humphreys.html
@56:07
[Ezra Klein] This idea that the way the policing should work is it should be very predictable, very certain like you will get picked up, and very modest, right, it’s almost like it operates as a constant annoyance—you end up in in jail for 24 hours and are let loose. And there was some evidence that definitely did decrease repeat offending—not among everybody but among enough people to really matter in the study. Do you still think that’s a good idea?
[Keith Humphreys] Absolutely. You know, it’s a good principle for enforcement and for deterrence to have it be predictable, responsive, and fair. There’s been a lot of success with drink driving and alcohol through the program 24/7 Sobriety, which started in South Dakota, and it’s now spread to about 15 or 20 states and is also now in other countries, like it’s all across England, all across Wales, where I was just last week working on that. It’s a model whereby people are sentenced after their second-third-fourth-fifth alcohol-related arrests to not be allowed to drink. They aren’t sent to jail, they aren’t fined, their car isn’t taken away, but their alcohol use is monitored literally every single day with swift and certain but modest consequences if they drink, and that program has reduced incarceration, it has reduced crime, it has reduced domestic violence, and it strikes a good balance between using the criminal justice system to protect and put some constraints on people but not in a way that ends up being carceral. And the place where we could really make a huge impact on that in the United States is the million people we’re already supervising on probation and parole who have substance-use problems.
Why has the opioid crisis lasted so long? (podcast)
freakonomics.com/podcast/why-has-the-opioid-crisis-lasted-so-long/
[Stephen Dubner]: That’s one suggestion. What else does Humphreys have?
[Keith Humphreys]: With the seven, eight million people at any given time who are on probation and parole, we should be drug-testing and alcohol-testing all of them, regardless of what they’re arrested for. And giving rewards and penalties based on their use—immediate, swift, and certain rewards. I’m not talking about violating them back to their original sentence, but you could have things like, “If you go through a week and you don’t use cocaine, we’ll knock a week off the end of your parole sentence.” Or the other way: “I’m afraid we’re going to add another week on your parole because you didn’t do that.”
[Dubner]: Humphreys himself has done some work on a program like this, for alcohol abuse; it’s called 24/7 Sobriety.
[Humphreys]: It was invented by a county prosecutor named Larry Long. Remarkable guy. He was seeing people he grew up with, in a small town in South Dakota, cycling through the court over and over with alcohol problems. And he felt bad for them because he knew—you know, we threaten you, we take away your car, we throw you in jail. Nothing works.
[Dubner]: And he said, the problem isn’t driving; the problem is drinking.
24/7 Sobriety is a court-mandated program for people who’ve been arrested multiple times for drunk driving. It involves constant and frequent testing.
[Humphreys]: Every morning, you have to come in, and you blow a breathalyzer. If it shows negative, you get immediate reward: “Have a great day, Keith.” You know, another day of freedom. If, on the other hand, it’s positive, there’s an immediate consequence: you’re arrested on the spot. Not maybe—certainly. And you are held in a cell for just one night. But it starts that night, immediate. Now you’d think in a way, a lot of these folks have been in prison, why would they care about one night in the jail system? It’s because it’s a swift and certain consequence. And all those other consequences in criminal justice are very probabilistic and distant. So when I heard about this program, I was in the Obama administration, I thought, “Oh, come on, half these people are going to show up drunk and the other half are going to be rampaging around the countryside.” And I went there the first morning, I remember this, in Sioux Falls, and watched 200 people go straight through—all 200 showed up, all 200 blew negative. In South Dakota now, they’ve done over 10 million tests, and the success rate—meaning, the proportion of times people show up and are not drinking—is 99.1 percent.
[Dubner]: The 24/7 Sobriety program also produced a significant reduction in repeat arrests for drunk driving.
[Humphreys]: Violence against women also went down dramatically. When you take alcohol out of somebody’s life, other good things happen.
…
[Humphreys]: If the criminal justice system were a parent, and it wanted its child to clean up its room, it would say, “Johnny, if you don’t clean up your room, there’s a 40 percent chance that 6 months from now, I will ground you for a decade.”
