LAW: Suicide After DUI

Ever since I read:
http://ridl.us/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12

I have been researching the DUI suicide rates and have yet to find an appropriate number with representation to be conclusive. It appears it is a hush-hush issue but what little I have found is alarming. It appears Stephen Beck's estimate of 3000 is a fair low as he claimed, there are many factors to be included when using the Lindsay M. Hayes and Joseph Rowan of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives research. Factors like the age of arrestees and the age group more likely to attempt suicide, a high percentage rate in the first 24 hours of which a high percentage were still so-called intoxicated. While intoxication may play a role, one has to wonder if the future perspective under such circumstances was not just accelerated to despair. Jail is the easy part of DUI conviction, there is the possible loss of work, loss of liscense, incredible fines and treatment,daily PBT's, AA meetings all that you are to get to without driving. Credit and families can be destroyed, self-respect and independance are lost, and a seemingly endless torment from the "New World Order" that has become of our justice system. Not to mention the ignition interlock, the "scarlet letter" plates, insurance rates and being labeled an alcoholic even if this was the first drink ever. Mr. Beck's original quote was calculated by taking a known (that doesn't mean there weren't more) percentage for a year in the suburban community of Detroit and multiplying it by arrests and came up with 6000, just in the jails, then for all due fairness cut it in half which was under what the NCIA study suggests. I wanted to find some numbers after the arrest, you know when life becomes obstacle after wall, that's even if you can get out of the rock and hard place, when the credit is shot, home and family are memories and finding the means is easier. While the research continues, I did find this:
In El Paso County, there were 510 deaths by suicide from 2000 through 2004. By comparison, there were 156 deaths due to DUI or drugs, and 132 homicides. (Colorado Dept. of Public Health & Environment)
http://sppppr.org/
William C. Head said he's seen DUI arrests ruin and even lead to the end of countless lives. "I've had seven (clients) commit suicide before they go to trial," he said. "I can't even tell you how many have had nervous breakdowns." The mental state of his clients, he said, prompted him to spend $8,000 to make a videotape he gives to every client, designed to convince them that they can rebuild their lives. "Not one has committed suicide since," he said. Head said that despite what police say, inaccurate blood alcohol test results are common. (6)
http://www.ga-drunkdrivinglawyer.com/dui-news-interviews/ajc-dui.htm

Maybe that 6000 figure isn't so unobtainable! Figures that totally eclipse the actual "killed by a drunk driver" at least four times over. There are seven with one attorney after getting out of jail, still before trial, no evidence of rate has been found during the repercussions of the conviction. One can only imagine that with the loss of jobs and the inability to get jobs due to lack of transportation can only stress the elements of a good life...and this type of stress has been associated with the likelihood of an attempt, and the buck does not stop here...everytime we hear about a new WAR ON... whether its drugs, terrorism, or what ever is next, our civil liberties become the casulties, and that is senseless death.

MADD stats show that there are a minimum of 1,158,000,000 Drunk Driving episodes a year
They claim there are 720,000 people injured or killed in Alcohol Related* accidents
This equates to a 1 in 1600 chance of "AR" injury or fatality, sounds scary right, it isn't as it appears.
*Alcohol Related includes drivers, pedestrians & occupants with any measurable amount of alcohol (.01+) and includes accidents where the tests are unknown!
Where is the real danger? As cited by Dr. Jeffrey Micheal of the NHTSA drivers with BrAC over .15 are responsible for the vast majority of actual Drunk Driving related fatalities and quotes "Alcohol-related occupant fatalities [in 2002]—up a total of 3%, and it’s all coming out of the high-BAC data source. In fact, it’s high BAC despite the reduction oflow BACs."3 , and ,"The average driver (that is drivers with any measurable BAC) involved in a fatal crash is at .16, about double the legal limit..." in fact, in 2002 one was more likely to be in an accident with a drug intoxicated driver than a driver within the .01 to .13 BrAC range.

Here is an example of the mindset:
"I believe that most people would not mind the slight
inconvenience of being arrested for a low blood-alcohol
level, given the opportunity to prove their innocence …"53
Linda Campion, MADD presenter and founder of the Kathleen A. Campion Foundation

LAW: Treatment For Substance "Use"

It is now being refered to as the DUI Industry and it is a billion dollar a year business. You can expect $6000 to come right out of your pocket and that does not include, future insurance rates, loss of work, inability to work, or the court ordered substance abuse treatment. What is wrong with substance abuse treatment you ask, first everyone that gets a DUI is not an alcoholic, in fact with the .08 per se laws I imagine the percentage is lower than one could expect. Second, the certificate to make an evaluation requires a fee and a short class, and the person fills out a form, no medical or psycological training is needed. Third, treatment should be retained for those in need, but the DUI industry continued to lower the evaluation standards until the net was big enough to catch every one.
Researchers and clinicians in the United States usually rely on the DSM diagnostic criteria. The evolution of diagnostic criteria for behavioral disorders involving alcohol reached a turning point in 1980 with the publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition (14). In DSM-III, for the first time, the term "alcoholism" was dropped in favor of two distinct categories labeled "alcohol abuse" and "alcohol dependence" (1,2,12,15). In a further break from the past, DSM-III included alcohol abuse and dependence in the category "substance use disorders" rather than as subsets of personality disorders (1,2,12).

The DSM was revised again in 1987 (DSM-III-R) (16). In DSM-III-R, the category of dependence was expanded to include some criteria that in DSM-III were considered symptoms of abuse. For example, the DSM-III-R described dependence as including both physiological symptoms, such as tolerance and withdrawal, and behavioral symptoms, such as impaired control over drinking (17). In DSM-III-R, abuse became a residual category for diagnosing those who never met the criteria for dependence, but who drank despite alcohol-related physical, social, psychological, or occupational problems, or who drank in dangerous situations, such as in conjunction with driving (17).

This conceptualization seems to allow the clinician to classify meaningful aspects of a patient's behavior even when that behavior was not clearly associated with dependence. Quote,"...who drank in dangerous situations, such as in conjunction with driving." All DUI convicts have substance use disorders, or are alcohol dependant, or simply put can shell some of their money out to the medical side of the DUI industry, don't believe me-"Diagnostic criteria allow clinicians to plan treatment and monitor treatment progress;...help health care insurers to decide whether treatment will be reimbursed; and allow patients access to medical insurance coverage (1-3)."

Linda Grant, executive director of treatment provider Evergreen Manor Inc. in Everett, said," "It's not that we don't want to see good quality work, and everybody tries for that,". "The vast majority of treatment providers really do want to do the right thing, but this is not a science. It's an art..."
Defined Art is - 1)Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.
2) Skill that is attained by study, practice, or observation: the art of the baker; the blacksmith's art.
My opinion, this is much like the art that allows the NHTSA to defy the Data Quality Act!
The study from Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) claims that adults who drink excessively and youths who drink illegally account for over half of the alcohol consumed in the United States..."Excessive drinking" sounds like it refers to people that have a serious alcohol problem. But the study significantly lowers the bar on "excessive," by defining it as any more than two drinks per day. That means that one glass of wine or beer at lunch and dinner and a brandy at bedtime makes you an "excessive" drinker.

Tough love, more punishment, this is one of the most pernicious myths about dealing with drug problems. Confrontational and humiliating "attack therapy" — often used in rehabs — actually increases the chances of relapse and treatment drop-out. People threatened with prison if they don’t quit drugs are no more likely to succeed in treatment than those who seek help on their own, according to a summary of the research published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Tough interventions — which threaten loss of employment or relationships if the person doesn’t shape up immediately — have resulted in suicides as well as recovery. "There is no doubt that aggressive, hostilely confrontational treatment protocols do more harm than good,"

Even though a client may be innocent they probably feel it necessary to plead guilty in hopes of a lighter sentence, one where the defendant may resume daily life with added treatment as opposed to incarcaration. I have seen this all too often! A vicious circle, and punishment for a disease that one may or may not have...

REFERENCE:
http://ridl.us/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=962
http://www.stats.org/record.jsp?type=news&ID=427

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A Quick Research on False-Positives

False-positives-It is a well-established psychological phenomenon that people tend to see what they expect to see, particularly in ambiguous situations. This is a quick research done on false-positives and how they can effect the integrity of our justice system.

A Bryn Mawr student gets caught at an airport with condoms filled with flour. She and her dorm mates made them as gag squeeze-toy stress relievers during finals. A field test -- conducted twice -- indicates that the condoms are filled with opium, cocaine, and amphetamines. The girl spends the next three weeks in jail on drug charges that could bring 20 years in prison.A jail guard recognizes the girl from volunteer work, believes her story, and tips off local Catholic groups to her cause. The group gets her competent representation, who demands the substance be retested. More extensive tests show it was flour after all.

There is an article which references cases involving drug sniffing dogs in the field giving false positives 8 percent of the time or more and studies where in "artificial testing situations" they gave false positives between 12 and a mindboggling 60 percent of the time. Generally dogs are brought in when there is already probable cause, but should the police begin to feel they don't need that reason, we can expect the proportion of false alerts to rise. Baye's Rule- in short a highly accurate test will give overwhelming numbers of false positives if the size of the population tested is far larger than the size of the possible true positives.

DNA- Last year it was discovered that 26-year-old Lazaro Soto Lusson was mistakenly charged with multiple felonies because the Las Vegas police crime lab switched the labels on two DNA samples. While in jail on an immigration hold, Lusson's cellmate, Joseph Coppola, accused him of rape. Police took DNA samples from both men to investigate the allegation. While undergoing the analysis, they ran the samples against the state database and matched Lusson's mislabled DNA to two unsolved sexual assaults. Lusson faced life in jail and was incarcerated for over a year before this mistake was discovered. Similar sample switch errors have led to false incrimination in rape cases in Philadelphia and San Diego.

Misinterpretation of DNA tests led to the false conviction of Timothy Durham in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Durham was convicted of raping an eleven-year-old girl and sentenced to 3,000 years in prison, despite having produced 11 alibi witnesses who placed him in another state at the time of the crime. The prosecution's case rested almost entirely on a DNA test, which showed that Durham's genotype matched that of the semen donor. Post-conviction DNA testing showed that Durham should have been excluded as a possible suspect, and re-analysis of the initial test showed that the misinterpretation arose from the difficulty of separating mixed samples. The lab had failed to separate completely the male and female DNA from the semen stain, and the combination of alleles from the two sources produced a genotype that could have included Durham's. Durham was released from prison in 1997 after serving 4 years in prison.

REFERENCES:

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/genetic/14995pub20031106.html
http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/02/belated_caballe_1.shtml
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/2005_12.php

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