Originally posted by: bamacre
You are still blaming and punishing people who have done no wrong.
You're being ridiculous. The state would be putting
whiskey plates on the DUI's car not his wife's car. If his family wants to borrow the car, then he's put them in this position, not the state. If I go and commit a bunch of crimes and the state puts me in jail and then my family loses my income I could make the exact same silly argument that the state is punishing people (my family) for something they didn't do (since it was I who committed the crimes).
If your stance is this tough for DUI offenders, then you should support the removal of their licenses all together, rather than punishing the entire family and/or other drivers of the same car.
I do, but this seems a much easier step. If they don't want their whiskey plates they're perfectly free to not put them on their car as long as it never leaves the garage. In fact, this is nicer to them. It says "You can still drive, just not without a shame-plate, but if you don't want the plate, don't drive!".
I'm sorry, but otherwise, your stance is just plain cruel. There is NO logical reason for punishing family members who would be driving the same car.
Cruel, my God man grow some skin. If I commit a crime, my family will suffer. It's what happens when one is part of a family, you share the goods and the bads. If I do something stupid like get sent to jail or multi DUI of course they're going to suffer because we live together and share our lives. Cruel would be the state also putting plates on my wife's car even though she was not drinking, but if I drink and own a car, it goes on mine! And if both cars are registered to my wife for some reason, well then I gotta pick one to plate up!
Using your same logic, we should jail the parents of people who commit murder.
No, my logic does not go there. Using YOUR logic, we should not send people to jail for commiting a crime if by their incarceration their family will suffer.
And just FYI, there have never been DUI's issued to anyone in my, at least, immediate family.
Good. Perhaps if one of your family members is careened into by somebody who has been caught driving drunk multiple times you'll have a different perspective on this.
Your stance maybe should also be that the offender has no license to drive at all, rather than punishing the other drivers of the car.
Ideally, yes, but the problem is you cannot enforce that. I am pulled over about every two years and if I was more careful I would never have been pulled over, so it's very easy to drive long term without a license and never get caught--people do it all the time.
I think this points to the real problem with our justice system: punishment is preferred to true rehabilitation.
Yes, the justice system doesn't work as well as it should. But you can't lock up DUI people long term, the jails would explode. The point of the plate would be to scare the crap out of others that they don't want a scarlet letter or scare the person who has it reminding him how much it sucks to pull up for work with a whiskey plate.
It used to be OK to drink & drive, as long as you weren't drunk.
It still is. .08 is a few drinks and already starts to impact driving skills.
In short, if you have 3 DUI's inside 10 years, you have a problem that some humiliating license plate is not gonna correct.
Who knows? We could easily stop this entire thread right now if somebody could show that the plates do not meaningful cut recidivism because if htey don't, they're a waste of time and I'll give up even arguing it!
I really despise this sort of "scarlet letter" sentencing. Ideally: Do the crime, do the time, and then it's over.
Ugh. Well, at least some people in here agree with me.
It would be PART of the crime and should not be retroactive.