Two Experimental Studies of Traffic Law. Volume I. The Effect of Legal Sanctions on DUI Offenders

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Two Experimental Studies of Traffic Law. Volume I. The Effect of Legal Sanctions on DUI Offenders

M. Blumenthal / H. L. Ross

Judges of the Denver, Colorado, County Court agreed to assign penalties of a fine, conventional probation, or rehabilitative probation according to a fixed schedule to 495 drivers convicted of a first offense of driving while intoxicated. Judges' departures from the agreed schedule in large numbers of cases made it necessary to introduce statistical controls in comparisons of subsequent records. In neither the original treatment groups nor the groups created by the judges' actual sentences were there found any significant diffences in subsequent crashes, moving violations, points, DUI convictions or time to first subsequent crash or moving violation. Those drivers sentenced to jail rather than to one of the three prescribed treatments also were found not to differ from the balance of the group in subsequent records. The research did not yield evidence that the types of sanction currently utilized in Denver produce measurable differential effect on driver behavior and highway safety. However, it was found that representation by a lawyer is powerfully effective in obtaining a more favorable legal treatment for defendants accused of driving while intoxicated.