NHTSA/NCJA Criminal Justice Summit on Impaired Driving

Executive Summary

 

This report outlines recommendations resulting from the Criminal Justice Summit on Impaired Driving, convened on November 21-22, 2002, by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Criminal Justice Association (NCJA), a Washington, D.C.-based, nonprofit organization representing the states and criminal justice community on crime control and public safety issues.  The Summit was held to identify gaps, problems and challenges in the criminal justice system in the handling of impaired drivers and then to assess solutions and strategies for increasing effectiveness in the enforcement, prosecution and adjudication phases of impaired driving cases.

Each year approximately 17,000 individuals are killed in alcohol-related traffic crashes and individuals with prior convictions for driving under the influence (DWI) and high blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels are too frequently involved.¹  While states have responded aggressively during the past two decades to enact hundreds of laws mandating stiffer penalties for driving under the influence, research suggests that repeat and high BAC impaired drivers have found ways to slip through loopholes in the system. Because of system weaknesses, these hardcore DWI offenders can avoid detection, evade arrest and escape prosecution and sanctions.  If the nation is to reach the goal of no more than 1.0 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by 2008, some drastic measures need to be employed to increase efficiency in dealing with repeat and high BAC DWI offenders. 

Overview of Recommendations
The participants at the Summit called overall for strong, sustained leadership to bring the issue to the forefront of the national agenda, as it was during the 1980s. Leadership from the top would help produce the necessary resources and action on the issue and also help to elevate public awareness and concern about the growing threat of repeat and high DWI offenders.  Participants' discussions also underscored a need for relationship building and collaboration among all sectors of the criminal justice system as well as between the criminal justice system and the media, advocacy groups, and professional communities that come into regular contact with DWI offenders and their victims.  This partnership-building would promote better management of and uniformity in the DWI system through increased opportunities for information sharing, cross training, and leveraging of resources.

An overview of specific recommendations made at each phase of the DWI system follows.  The points of view and opinions expressed at the Summit and in this report are those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Transportation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or the National Criminal Justice Association.

Enforcement Phase

Recommendations to improve DWI enforcement included ways to garner leadership support and improve community relations. Additional recommendations sought ways to reduce paperwork, increase information sharing, and enhance training.  An overview of specific recommendations is as follows:

• Law enforcement executives should help create taskforces and coalitions to develop strategies, identify best practices and secure financial and other resources for dealing with chronic DWI offenders.
• Law enforcement training in DWI enforcement must be mandatory, standardized across jurisdictions, and involve multiple disciplines.   It also should be more in-depth to improve officers' ability to build stronger DWI cases for prosecution.
• New collaborations should be sought with:

- state attorneys general and governors offices who have the ability to help enact strong laws that research has shown are effective;

- state highway safety offices, law enforcement standards and training boards and law enforcement associations who can help make quality training mandatory; and

- the media, victims' rights organizations and advocacy groups who can help raise awareness of this issue.

• The voluminous paperwork involved in DWI enforcement should be streamlined and simplified without omitting the details needed to prosecute offenders.  This involves the increased use of technology, the integration of information systems, and the standardization of forms, protocols and procedures.

Prosecution Phase

Recommendations to improve the DWI system at the prosecution phase focused on ways to attract qualified and retain experienced prosecutors to try DWI cases, increase prosecutors' involvement in anti-DWI efforts, and change court room procedures to improve conviction rates of DWI offenders.  An overview of recommendations is as follows:

• Through the leadership of a state level "traffic resource prosecutor" in each state, prosecutors should be proactively involved in efforts to reduce DWI, particularly among repeat offenders and to make DWI prosecution a higher priority in prosecutor offices.
• Prosecutors and public defenders should help coordinate and be involved in DWI training, particularly with law enforcement officers to help improve the quality of cases brought to court. 
• Prosecutors and public defenders should actively encourage the development of programs to retain qualified prosecutors and public defenders in DWI, and help set guidelines with regard to DWI penalties.
• Working with judges, prosecutors should help define priorities for incarceration as well as explore community treatment options and alternative sentencing programs to help reduce recidivism and alleviate system costs.  Judges, prosecutors, and public defenders also should work together on finding ways to expedite case processing to reduce backlogs.

Adjudication and Disposition Phase

Recommendations to improve the DWI system at the adjudication and disposition phase focused on ways to improve judges' and court administrators' ability to better manage caseloads, monitor and enforce sentences.  Summit participants overall did not recommend mandatory minimum sentencing.  An overview of the recommendations is as follows:

• Specialized courts, such as DWI courts, should be utilized more to help improve case management and provide access to specialized personnel which will speed up disposition and adjudication.  Specialized courts also will increase access to drug and alcohol testing and assessment to help identify DWI offenders with addiction problems and help prevent them from re-offending. Specialized courts also help with sentence monitoring and enforcement.
• Court efforts to enforce sanctions can include the creation of habitual offender teams, mini-warrant service teams who can conduct weekend sweeps as well as community policing partnerships with law enforcement officers and probation officers.
• Judicial education and training must be improved with regard to the technical aspects of DWI investigations and it should cover more in-depth information on managing high caseloads. 
• Resources for judicial training should be identified, including nongovernmental funds available.  Examples include scholarship funds that are sometimes offered through the National Judicial College or private foundations.  In some cases, judges may pay for a portion of training expenses out of their budgets or alternative state and local funding sources.
• Judges should limit "delay tactics" which lengthen court proceedings and lead to backlogs.
• Judges should work with prosecutors and public defenders to set sentencing guidelines and identify priorities for supervision of certain defendants.

The Report

The first section of this report provides an introduction and overview of the Summit, including the deliberate design of the meeting.  The Summit was designed to achieve the most comprehensive and broad identification of the challenges facing the system as a whole and the most innovative and inclusive solutions to making the system more effective and efficient by meeting in smaller, multidisciplinary groups as well as by professions.  The Summit was divided for organizational purposes into three phases - law enforcement, prosecution and adjudication – but each phase was viewed broadly in order to include the work done by all the criminal justice system components represented at the meeting. The second section, "Summit Recommendations: Challenges and Solutions" lays out the overarching needs to improve the DWI system, as well as the DWI system challenges that were viewed as priorities, in the enforcement phase, prosecution phase and the adjudication phase.  Multidisciplinary breakout groups identified solutions. The final section, "Implementation Plans and Next Steps," is a report of the immediate steps participants representing the various disciplines within the DWI system committed to take to facilitate change and improve the effectiveness for the handling of impaired driving offenses.