Celebrities like Lindsay Lohan aren’t the only ones being sentenced to alcohol monitoring bracelets. According to this article from the Dallas Morning News, well over 500 Texas courts are using them as sentencing tools.
The SCRAM (secure continuous alcohol monitoring) bracelets, as they are called, test sweat released from your pores to determine if you have been drinking, in violation of your probation.
While the bracelets aren’t 100% accurate, a fact not lost on defense attorneys, they are said to prevent probationers and other DWI offenders from drinking and if they don’t successfully prevent it, they require them to be accountable for violating by notifying the probation department.
Every 30 minutes, the alcohol monitoring bracelet analyzes sweat and sends the results to the company and finally to the probation office. While it isn’t a certain probation revocation, a positive can start violation proceedings.
Judges most often apply the use of the SCRAM in conjunction with other tools like ignition interlock devices. Unfortunately for the defendant, however, both of these items require money to maintain them.
It’s said that monthly SCRAM costs run around $400. For many people accused of DWI, this cost is simply unaffordable. Ignition interlock devices require maintenance costs as well, putting even more stress on the budgets of people already likely to be facing fines and court costs.
Like many tools used in the management of probationers, the use of these bracelets is far from perfect. With false positives for things like hairspray and mechanical problems they can cause headaches to not only the people wearing them but the officers tasked with monitoring the probationers.
If you are in Dallas and facing DWI charges, there’s a chance you could be required to wear a SCRAM bracelet. You may also be required to serve jail time and pay some pretty hefty fines. When facing charges like this, it pays to have a local defense attorney on your side.
If you are looking at DWI charges and unsure of the best course of action, contact my offices today. Get a free legal consultation and some valuable advice on your DWI case.
My husband was just convicted of his 8th DWI. The DwI cases date back from 1979. He spent 10 years in prison which offerd him no help. If you want to call Safp offered by the TDC help. That is a joke. The counselors that TDC uses are inmates. My husband has admitted he is an alcoholic and has retained a highly reccommended addiction counselor. He has been sober for over a year and was senteced to 35 yrs on his last case. It looks like to me that the laws could be changed to allow people with the disease of alcholism who have admitted they are alcholics the option to wear the scram moniotrs, take the medication anabuse and do whatever is neccesary to over come the disease. My husband would be willing to pay the fees for the scram monitor and anabuse to be able to be a productive citizen, pay his child support and work. Not be locked up for the tax payers to pay for him to be incarcerated. The laws need to be changed to allow the millions of people with alcholism who have admitted they are and who can reamin sober with technology and counseling to be able to work and not be put in overcrowed prisons for the tax payer to have to pay for.
Absolutely. There is a real opportunity to use these scram devices to actually help people with serious alcohol problems, instead of punishing them at great expense to the taxpayers.
AMEN!