About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

56 Fed. Probation 6 (1992)
Probation and the Drunk Driver: A Cost of Being MADD

handle is hein.journals/fedpro56 and id is 108 raw text is: Probation and the Drunk Driver: A Cost of Being 'MADD By PATRICK KINKADE, MmTHEW C. LEONE, AND THoMAs WACKER* D RUNK DRIVING has been called one of the imost serious problems confronting America today (Heinzelmann, 1985, p. 265). Hundreds of thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in prop- erty damage have been attributed to the drunk driver (Heinzelmann, 1985). The enormous costs of drunk driving have, moreover, resulted in a wide- spread social movement directed at deterrence. Or- ganizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD) are actively seeking both legal and societal solutions to the problem. These organizations have lobbied many state legislatures requesting more se- vere sanctions, most often mandatory confinement, to deter the individual from driving while intoxi- cated (Heinzelmann, 1985). On the societal level, a public conception of the drunk driver as a killer drunk (Gusfield, 1981) has caused the DUI (driving under the influence) offender to become a new social pariah. Unfortunately, these legal and social inter- ventions have had many negative impacts on the criminal justice system. The Consequences of foughDUI Legislation Intended Consequences Examples of evaluative case study researching the intended effects of tough DUI legislation can be drawn from around the world and across the states. These include the 1971 Chicago laws (Robertson, Rich, & Ross, 1973), the Norway drinking-driving laws (Ross, 1975), the British Road Safety Act of 1973 (Ross, 1981), the French drinking-driving laws of 1978 (Ross, McCleary, & Epperlein, 1982), the Hennepin County (Minnesota) laws of 1982 (National Highway and Traf- fic Safety Administration, 1984), the Washington State Laws of 1980 (Heinzelmann, 1985), the British Christmas Crusade (Ross, 1987), the 1982 Kansas laws (Shore & Maguin, 1988), and the New Wales and Tasmania laws (Homel, 1988). Early research in this area presented a single overriding theme concerning the effect of such tough legislation. Simply stated, DUI legislation does deter, but only in the short term. More recent research, however, has brought this con- clusion into question. Contextualizing (Snortum, 1988) the analysis of tough drunk driving legislation suggests the need to *Dr. Kinkade is assistant professor and Mr. Wacker is research assistant, Criminal Justice Program, Texas Chris- tian University. Dr. Leone is assistant professor, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Nevada, Reno. move beyond a simple legal definition of deterrence to a more sociological perspective. The decision to drink and drive is the result of complex interplay between formal and informal sanctions (Wachholz, 1987), the physical and social environments (Homel & Wilson, 1988), and the traditional model of marginal deter- rence (for a discussion, see Shover, Bankston, & Gur- ley, 1977). The totality of this interplay must be evaluated before a conclusive evaluation about the effects of tough legislation may be made. It may be, for example, that the formal sanctions set in the laws did not deter the drinking driver in an immediate sense, but did work to change the social and self perceptions of the drinking driver. These changes become infor- mal sanctions (i.e., personal guilt and peer pressure) that do deter the behavior. The law change, therefore, did achieve its desired effect, only in a way that went beyond the traditional model of marginal deterrence. Moreover, it has also been demonstrated that law changes that are coupled with increased publicity and enforcement can achieve long-term deterrent effects (Shore & Maguin, 1988; Hommel, 1988). There were several initial evaluations of California tough DUI laws done in relation to their impact on traffic safety (Peck, 1983; Bloch, 1984; Hilton, 1984). Each of these attempts to isolate an enduring deter- rent effect achieved only limited success, but none rejected the possibilitythat it may, in fact, exist. Bloch, and Peck, applying time series methodology, used sev- eral major indices of alcohol-related accidents to test for a deterrent effect. The results suggested there was an immediate decrease in drinking-driving behavior which was followed by a slow but persistent return to the pre-intervention levels. Both researchers suggest the need for broader based research efforts to deter- mine the absolute effects of the law change. Hilton's work also failed to conclusively demonstrate a deter- rent effect for drinking and driving but did provide some evidence that it may be eventually isolated using more sensitive dependent measures. The inevitability of the deterioration of the deterrent effects of drunk driving legislation is not without criti- cism. Votey (1984), for example, argues that the return of the accident levels may be a statistical artifact due to a failure to properly moderate the accident process. The threat of punishment may be deterring the drunk driver, but this effect may be lost in a milieu of other factors which induce accidents. Most recently, Rogers (1990) suggests that in California since 1980 there has

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most