Several years ago a para-legal, who also happened to be vice-president of the Brown Jug liquor store in Anchorage, initiated a new Fake ID law for Alaska. He promoted the notion that the market for fake IDs could be better regulated, based on the following logic:

When a minor uses a false identification or misuses a valid ID to attempt to circumvent the law, a crime has been committed, and that’s the case in almost every jurisdiction.

But too often the business that has been hoodwinked gets charged with the crime when it is in reality the business that is the victim.

In Alaska, they take a different tack: a business that is the victim or attempted victim of such fraud can confiscate the ID, then sue the perpetrator for $1,000 in civil damages.

After the law passed the Brown Jug started to alert parents of teens caught with fake IDs that they had the option of fighting a civil action or paying a $300 fine and sending the accused to alcohol awareness classes. Seems to me that someone using a fake ID to get alcohol is already plenty aware of the stuff, but I digress.

Has this approach been successful?

According to [Brown Jug’s] O’Neill, bouncers at the club spot a lot of false IDs and earn enough in resulting bonuses that these jobs have become very sought after and are considered to be high paying.

At Chilkoot Charlies, O’Neill said, one-third of the $1,000 penalty goes to the bouncer, one-third is kept by the company for administration (they pay a lawyer to process the letters and claims) and one-third is donated to a charity called People First.

As of the end of November, Brown Jug stores had confiscated almost 200 misused IDs. Last year the company nabbed 284, so word might be out that you do not attempt to use a phoney ID at Brown Jug—just the result the company was hoping for. “Kids spread the word,” O’Neill said.

“We confiscate more false IDs than all the other licensees in the state combined,” O’Neill said, not by way of bragging, but to illustrate how much more effective the law could be with more diligence from fellow licensees.

That last note caught my attention, especially as earlier in the article O’Neill admits

“Not enough licensees do it,” he said, “and no one at the police department has the time or desire to do it.”

Why not increase the fees until the police think it is worth their time or they have “desire”? Setting a bounty for accusations has its risks (aside from opportunity cost — police investigating other more serious offenses). For example, I wonder if they have run into a situation yet where unscrupulous bouncers or checkout clerks are generating the fake IDs themselves and then framing kids in order to blackmail parents? Taking that thought a little further, I wonder if Alaska will soon promote legislation that allows the people to sue companies responsible for security breaches involving IDs? That might help prevent fake IDs from reaching the market and thus be a powerful counterpart to the Brown Jug Law (incentive to detect fake IDs). Or, in a more specific sense, it would help decrease the incentive to steal an ID from one customer to blackmail another.

I found the Brown Jug Law article on the Montana Gaming Group website.