This article reports on a study that assessed a 28-day detention and treatment program’s effect on first-time offenders sentenced for driving while impaired (DWI) in a multiethnic county with high rates of alcohol-related arrests and crashes.
The study used comparison of baseline characteristics, survival curves of subsequent arrest, and Cox proportional hazards regression to examine probability of rearrest of those sentenced and those not sentenced to the program. The study found that the probability of not being rearrested was significantly higher for the treatment group after adjustment for covariates. At 5 years, the probability of not being rearrested for the treatment group compared to the nontreatment group was 76.6 percent vs. 59.9 percent. Overall, these results suggest that this county’s program has significantly affected rearrest rates for Native Americans, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic Whites. 3 tables and 21 references (publisher abstract modified)