In today’s Albuquerque Journal (subscription), Metro Court officials complain of the lack of funding to enforce the interlock law for DWI offenders.
Court officials say it’s a good law but difficult to enforce.
“It takes money, and it takes bodies to enforce any mandate of the executive branch,” Nakamura said.
Officials say compliance officers are needed to ensure offenders get the device installed and to respond if there’s a violation. Otherwise, “it’s the honor system,” Nakamura said.
What is wrong with these people? In the two minutes it took me to read the article, I can think of several solutions, and none of them require additional funding:
- Partner with MADD and the DWI Resource Center to secure volunteers to verify compliance.
- Partner with local high schools to require seniors to do a service learning project centered on compliance verification. It has the added benefit of being a potential deterrent.
- Sentence every DWI offender to 20 hours of community service at an interlock verification facility.
See, no additional funding required. In fact, we could probably save the taxpayers the $175,000 that is already being spent.