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Part 5 of 7 · Age check logger series ~5 min read

The evidence, and the three months after a failed test purchase

The evidence that helps after a failed test purchase is the evidence that existed before it. Nothing assembled on the Monday morning carries the weight of a record written three weeks earlier, and everybody who reads it knows the difference.

Key takeaways

  • Selling alcohol to a child is an offence by the person who made the sale; the defence turns on reasonable steps.
  • Two unlawful sales on the same premises within three consecutive months is an offence by the licence holder.
  • A fixed penalty paid for the first sale is admissible as evidence that it happened.
  • The pack is assembled from records written at the time, never reconstructed afterwards.
  • The three months after a failure are run differently, and the system knows when they end.

Three sources, one pack

The till, the register and the rules combined into a write-once evidence packThree boxes on the left feed one box on the right. The till, holding the prompt, the answer and the hour around it, labelled that night. The register, holding the book, the joins and the reviews, labelled the weeks before. The rules, holding the policy and the accepted ID that day, labelled as they stood. All three converge on Evidence pack, written once and never edited, which feeds a box labelled Licence holder, who decides what to send and to whom. A note says nothing in the pack is written after the event except its index, and every document in it existed, with a timestamp, before anybody knew it would be needed.The tillthe prompt, the answer,and the hour around itthat nightThe registerthe book, the joins,and the reviewsthe weeks beforeThe rulesthe policy and theaccepted ID that dayas they stoodEvidence packwritten once,never editedLicence holderdecides what to send,and to whomNothing in the pack is written after the event except its index. Every document in it existed, with a timestamp, before anybody knew it would be needed.
Fig 1. Three sources, all of them written before the day in question. The pack adds an index and nothing else.
  • Security & identity
  • Analytics
  • People

What the law actually turns on

Selling alcohol to someone under eighteen is an offence by the person who made the sale. Their defence is that they believed the customer was eighteen or over and either asked for evidence of age that would have convinced a reasonable person, or nobody could reasonably have suspected from the customer’s appearance that they were under eighteen. An answer of clearly over 25 to a sixteen-year-old is a bet on the second limb, and test purchase volunteers are not chosen for looking older than they are.

For the business, the pack is a record of reasonable steps: the policy in force, the prompt that appeared, a link to the training record held elsewhere, and a register showing refusals being made and reviewed. It cannot make the sale lawful and is not meant to. It shows whether the sale was one person’s lapse inside a system that works, or what the system looked like all along.

Building the pack

One function builds it from a store, a date and a time. It pulls every prompt at that store for the hour either side, the rule versions they were answered under, twelve weeks of the register with its joins and reviews, and every flag raised for anybody on that shift with the date it was closed. It writes the lot as a single object that cannot be overwritten, and sends the licence holder a link.

At Station Road the pack showed the prompt at 21:40 answered clearly over 25 two seconds after it appeared, by a login that had answered 1,206 prompts in the previous four weeks without a refusal. It also showed the other three stores refusing at between six and eight times Station Road’s rate, a book reviewed and signed every week, and no flag, because nothing had been reading the rate. That last line is not comfortable, and it is in the pack because it is true.

The three months that follow

The three-month window opened on a store by an underage saleA horizontal row of five boxes joined by arrows. The sale, on a Friday at twenty to ten with one person on the till. The pack, built that night and written once. Window opens: three consecutive months, for this store. Run differently: no lone late shifts, and rates read weekly. Window closes: recorded, with the rates across it. A note says a second unlawful sale inside the window is a different offence, and it belongs to the licence holder rather than to whoever was serving.AFTER AN UNDERAGE SALE, ON THE SAME PREMISESThe saleFriday, 21:40,one on the tillThe packbuilt that night,written onceWindow opensthree consecutivemonths, this storeRun differentlyno lone late shifts,rates read weeklyWindow closesrecorded, with therates across itA second unlawful sale inside the window is a different offence, and it belongs to the licence holder rather than to whoever was serving.
Fig 2. The window is a date range held by the system, not a period somebody remembers to be careful in.
  • Machine learning
  • Security & identity
  • Management
  • People

Why the window is a field, not a memory

The persistent selling offence is committed when alcohol is unlawfully sold to someone under eighteen on two or more different occasions within three consecutive months on the same premises, and it is committed by the premises licence holder. The customers need not be the same person, and a fixed penalty paid for the first sale is admissible as evidence that it happened.

So any underage sale opens a window on that store, with an end date the system holds rather than one a manager has to remember. For those three months Station Road ran without lone late shifts on Fridays and Saturdays, its rates were read weekly instead of monthly, and every flag for the store went to the licence holder as well as the area manager.

When the window closed the system recorded that it had, with the rates across it. Station Road’s late shifts answered 5,721 prompts in those three months and refused 107, or 18.7 per thousand, which is the number the rota decision was then made on.

What an evidence pack holds

  • The rule. Minimum age, policy age and accepted ID, as versioned on the date.
  • The prompt. Time shown, time answered, the answer, the login and the till.
  • The hour around it. Every other prompt at the store, for context.
  • The register. Twelve weeks of lines, joins and signed reviews.
  • The rates. The store’s and the login’s, against the same shifts elsewhere.
  • Flags. Every one raised for that shift, and when and how it was closed.

Licence reviews

The same pack, widened, answers a licence review. The protection of children from harm is one of the four licensing objectives, and a register that shows refusals being made at a believable rate, joined to a till that asks the question and reviewed by somebody with their name on it, is the most direct answer a shop can give. It is also an answer that cannot be put together in the fortnight before a hearing.

The next post prices it and the one after gives the service names, the tables and the IAM. The cost is almost entirely handwriting: the till export is parsed for nothing, and each photograph of a page is one model read.

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