- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 21/Jul 05:15

ID, or I don’t

AUSTIN FIDO IN MY 20s, I spent some time in a small American town with a passion for shark fishing and keeping alcohol out of the hands (and mouths) of anyone under the age of 21. Local bars and liquor stores wallpapered their interiors with contraband driver’s licences, seized from foolhardy teens who had tried to cheat the system with a fake ID. This zeal was occasionally misplaced. A visiting Canadian friend had his ID impounded by an overeager bartender on the grounds that nothing like it had been seen in the town before. And I almost lost my Green Card to a store clerk who identified it as a fake because (deep breath) it wasn’t green. So I’ve twice had to deal with the police over matters of identification, and in both cases it was to retrieve a legitimate document. I was reminded of these experiences when Roger Alexander, TT’s Minister of Homeland Security, told the media there will soon be legislation mandating citizens to walk with ID at all times. The law was required, he said, because police need to enforce the forthcoming laws raising the minimum legal age for consuming alcohol and marijuana, as well as for gambling. Setting aside civil liberties concerns, Minister Alexander’s explanation suggests the police will be presiding over all transactions involving booze, weed, and betting – which is going to require a significantly larger police force. At least we now know how the government intends to keep the unemployment rate subdued. Despite Alexander’s claims, a country can absolutely raise its legal drinking age without making it illegal to leave your home without ID. A couple of years ago, Barbados raised the age at which it is legal to purchase alcohol (from 16 to 18), but Bajans are not required to carry ID at all times. Kenya will soon raise its drinking age from 18 to 21; while it’s strongly advised that you always have ID on you in Kenya, and the country does have a mandatory national ID, there isn’t technically a law criminalising not having identification (it can just feel that way if you’re stopped by police). In the US, the legal drinking age is already 21, but the country has no law compelling its citizens to walk with ID. I expect the TT government will soon dispense with trying to connect mandatory ID to the drinking age. Indeed, it has already started the process. The other Minister Alexander, Senator Phillip Edward of Housing, chided the government’s critics for challenging the compulsory ID plans: “Generally the purpose of mandatory ID law is to aid law enforcement…We say we want to fix crime. Look at other countries who use such law to manage security,” he posted on Facebook. I have followed the minister’s instruction, and I must report I cannot find any convincing evidence to support the claim that mandatory ID is an effective way to combat crime or manage national security. If one of the Ministers Alexander has that evidence, perhaps he might share it with the general public. In the meantime, if the concern is reducing crime, the Ministers Alexander could throw their energy behind a government policy that can reasonably be expected to curb criminal behaviour, or at least delay it. Over the last decade or so, studies in New Zealand, Canada, and the US have all found a spike in reported criminal acts in populations that have just reached the age at which they can legally purchase and consume alcohol. That is people (usually, but not exclusively, men) who have just turned 18 in New Zealand, 18 or 19 in Canada (where states set their own drinking laws), and 21 in America. The studies are all conducted at different times, in different places, and look at slightly different statistics. Nonetheless, they share the conclusion that there is a detectable increase in criminal offences (generally, public order offences) among populations in their first month or so of being legally of age to buy and consume alcohol. If similar behaviours apply in TT, it suggests that by raising the legal drinking age to 21, there will immediately be a group of 18-year-olds who don’t get into alcohol-induced trouble with the law. And we have a few years to try to ensure they don’t simply defer that trouble to their 21st birthdays. If I were a minister of government, I might be more focused on that possible policy outcome than any perceived need to make walking around with empty pockets a criminal offence. The post ID, or I don’t appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.