Reducing Recidivism in Driving While Disqualified

Abstract

Driving while disqualified, that is, during a period of license revocation, represents a serious and recurrent social problem: About 54% of convicted individuals are reconvicted in the ensuing 6 years. This article briefly outlines a relapse-prevention cognitive-behavioral treatment program for offenders convicted of driving while disqualified. Results indicate that the 144 treated offenders were reconvicted of further violations of license revocation at a significantly lower rate than offenders in a matched comparison group. Although no difference was found for subsequent drunk-driving convictions, it appears that the program may have reduced other subsequent criminal offending. In addition, there were significant pre-to posttreatment changes on a number of relevant social competency variables. These results provide support for the efficacy of a relapse-prevention approach to this group of offenders and for identification of disqualified drivers as a distinct subgroup of driving offenders.