Editorial: Pitiful penalties for drunk driving

It makes me shudder to think people like Steven James Davies are on the road.

As you can read on page A5 today, Davies is a recidivist drink driver who, on the evening of January 20 this year, was twice caught drunk driving.

First, at about 9.15pm, he was clocked going 109km/hr in a 50km/hr zone in Papamoa. An evidential breath test showed he was almost double the adult legal limit of 400mcgs. He was suspended from driving for 28 days and sent home. But, about two hours later, with his breath alcohol reading at 601mcgs, he was again caught driving on Riverstone Drive in Tauranga.

It wasn't the first time Davies had been caught driving drunk twice on the same day - it also happened in 2002. Why would you bother adhering to a driving suspension when you can't even see the point in staying sober to drive home?

The staggering thing is, even with six drink-driving convictions to his name, 27-year-old Davies has avoided prison. Instead, he is on home detention for six months in Welcome Bay, must do 200 hours community work and must not drive for 18 months. While there does come a time when some people turn the page and decide to rewrite their future, and this might well be Steven James Davies' time, recent form would suggest he is hardly going to take that driving suspension seriously.

I don't understand what it takes to get a prison sentence in this country?

If you obviously have no respect for measures such as driving suspensions and standards such as sobriety when in charge of a motor vehicle, how can you be trusted to sit at home and do your knitting throughout a home detention sentence? How many chances do we give people to kill themselves or others through stupidity such as drink-driving?

In Tauranga District Court yesterday, Judge David McKegg promised Davies next time he'd be locked up. He said prior to changes to the Sentencing Act and the introduction of home detention, Davies would have been prison-bound.

According to the Corrections Department, section 8 of the Sentencing Act 2002 "requires the court to impose the least restrictive outcome that is appropriate in the circumstances. (Home detention) is a less restrictive sentence than prison, and must therefore be seriously considered."

It is outrageous that the law is more worried about ensuring Davies gets the least restrictive sentence than his chances of reoffending. The Bay of Plenty has the highest recidivist offending rate for drink driving in the country. Do repeat drink drivers need to kill someone before we lock them up? The penalties are pitiful.