Sobriety tags, or Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirement (AAMR) as they are formally known, generated a lot of media interest when their introduction came into law in England at the end of March. Many positive reports focused on the expected impact on the reduction in alcohol-related crime, which is reported to fuel around 39% of criminal activity.
Following legislative change, we worked with partners including the lead department on the policy, HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS), as well as judges, legal advisers and our own court staff. Together, we ensured the criminal courts had processes in place to help the judiciary meet the new requirements.
Preparing for national rollout
Support for this new sobriety measure was generally very high. A compliance rate of over 97% in trials involving over 1,500 offenders successfully demonstrated the potential benefits.
Before this new sentencing power could be made available nationally, we needed to give the judiciary and legal advisers the necessary sentencing knowledge and adapt court recording processes to implement the tags.
Our biggest challenge was dealing with the restrictions caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We adapted to provide all judicial and staff training and information electronically, without any face-to-face interaction. We used a range of digital channels, from videos and animations to webinars attracting over 1,500 attendees across 20 events. This training made sure people in our courts were well prepared.
About the sobriety tags
First introduced in Wales in October 2020, the national rollout came into effect in England on 31 March. This followed two successful pilots in London and in North Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Humberside.
A sobriety tag can be imposed on adult offenders as a requirement of their community order or suspended sentence order for an alcohol-related offence, or an associated offence that's alcohol related. The rationale is that if offenders are stopped from drinking, they stop committing crimes.
No offence is excluded from AAMR if it’s alcohol related. But a sobriety tag can't be imposed where the person is alcohol dependent or alongside an alcohol treatment requirement.
During the pilots, sobriety tags were most frequently imposed for violent offences. In the northern England pilot, 31% were domestic violence offences. Other offences included, but were not limited to, drink driving and theft.
How the tag works
A sobriety tag bans the offender from drinking alcohol for up to 120 days and their compliance is electronically monitored. An ankle tag takes a sample of sweat from beneath it every 30 minutes and uploads the data to a base station, usually every 24 hours, at an agreed time. The Electronic Monitoring Service (EMS) fits the tags in the same way as those on curfew or location monitoring orders.
Probation staff are responsible for monitoring compliance and for enforcement. They use a portal to access the information sent from base stations and deal with alcohol alerts.
In the event of a breach, the probation service decide whether a case should be brought back to the court, with a full and detailed report of all alleged breaches. These would include for example, if someone had consumed an alcoholic drink, but also if they had washed their hands in a sanitiser containing alcohol, which of course wouldn't constitute a confirmed breach. The detail and the clarity of the probation report helps the court to decide on further sentencing.
Various attempts to avoid a breach have not succeeded. People have tried to obstruct the tag by inserting a foreign object like tin foil between it and the skin. And a more extreme attempt involved encasing the tag in chicken skin!
Feedback
Nigel McLean, a District Judge in the Magistrates’ court observed:
“From the offenders’ perspective, it provides them with an opportunity to reflect on just how much of an impact alcohol has had on their lives and on their offending.”
Becky Bailey, from the Probation Service, added:
“And there are also wider social benefits. People told us about improved relationships, improved ability to sustain employment, and improved finances because they weren't spending the money on alcohol.
“So, the benefit of this intervention to victims is that they’re given assurance that the offenders are being continuously monitored and their alcohol use is being addressed. And we saw this was really powerful, particularly in cases of domestic abuse, where the offender was potentially still living with the victim.
“In these cases, we were also able to share information with other agencies such as children's services, substance misuse providers or the police, which made a really effective way of multiagency management.”
And a final note of approval from an offender who was subject of an AAMR:
“I'd just say that I've been quite surprised how it has worked really because I didn't think I would actually be like this today. I didn't think I'd ever change, and I have, and I think completely different to what I did six months ago.
“You know what I mean? It's mad really.”