THE RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF SANCTIONS APPLIED TO 1ST-TIME DRUNKEN DRIVING OFFENDERS

We selected for study drivers who were sentenced either to jail or a c ertified driver intervention program (DIP) in Franklin County, Ohio, i n 1987 after their first drunken driving (DUI) conviction. Because eac h drunken driving charge was assigned to one of a pool of 15 judges wi th widely varying sentencing patterns, there was no apparent bias in s ubject allocation to the two treatments. For the jailed (n = 124) and DIP (n = 218) cohorts, we compared the likelihood of subsequent impair ed driving, as evidenced by rearrest for a new alcohol-related driving offense or involvement in a car crash after drinking in the 4 years f ollowing the study-selected event. After controlling for potentially i mportant covariates, such as gender, age, race, blood alcohol concentr ation, additional charges filed at the time of arrest, and driving his tory, we derived logistic regression results indicating that DIP atten dees had significantly lower rates of subsequent impaired driving. Dri vers who had no prior history of at least one non-DUI alcohol-related offense were significantly more likely to display additional impaired driving when jailed as opposed to those enrolled in a DIP (odds ratio [OR] = 2.53, confidence interval [CI] = 1.44, 4.45), while those with previous alcohol-related offenses may have fared better in jail (OR = .56, CI = .11, 2.76). Drivers younger than 21 years of age were also a t elevated risk for repeat offenses (OR = 2.46, CI = 1.13, 5.35). DIPs appear most effective when used for persons who have not had previous alcohol-related crashes or driving offenses.