Drunk Drivers, DWI “Drug Court” Treatment, and Recidivism: Who Fails?

Abstract

We conducted an evaluation of an experimental Driving-While-Intoxicated (DWI) Drug Court treatment program operated by a single municipal court. Specially trained court personnel assessed first-time (and, as we found out, some second-time) DWI offenders for symptoms of alcoholism. Once court personnel reached a clinical determination that an individual was an alcoholic, research team members randomly assigned that person to either the treatment program or to a control group receiving normal municipal court processing. A third group consisted of a like number of randomly selected, nonalcoholic, first-time offenders. The conviction records of all three groups were tracked for up to 24 months following the initial DWI conviction. We found significantly fewer alcohol-related and other serious crime reconvictions for the nonalcoholic group. Among those determined to be alcoholic, the treatment group had significantly fewer reconvictions than the control group. We address the implications and limitations of our findings for similar experimental studies in criminal justice and for DWI Drug Court treatment programs.