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Abstract
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BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The US state of South Dakota's 24/7 Sobriety Program (24/7) requires individuals charged or convicted of alcohol-involved offenses to avoid alcohol and submit to twice-daily or continuous alcohol testing. We evaluated the impact of the 24/7 program in the US state of Montana.
METHODS: Using data from everyone in Montana who was convicted of their second driving under the influence (DUI) offense from 2009 through mid-2014, we described program violations among 24/7 participants and then estimated the effect of 24/7 participation on the probability of DUI re-arrest. To address potential selection issues related to individual-level 24/7 participation, we used an instrumental variables approach that exploits county-level variation in program adoption.
RESULTS: Among 2,768 persons arrested for a second DUI in our analytic sample, 356 24/7 participants were monitored for an average of 173 days (median=112 days). Among the 332 participants monitored by breath test, 95.5% of scheduled alcohol breath tests were completed and did not lead to a program violation. After controlling for individual- and community-level covariates as well as year and county fixed effects, our instrumental variable models suggest that participation in 24/7 reduced the 1-year DUI re-arrest probability by at least 80% (Preferred model: 86% decrease; 8.9 percentage points) compared with a counterfactual group of persons arrested for a second DUI over the same period but not assigned to the program.
CONCLUSIONS: South Dakota USA's 24/7 Sobriety Program appears to work in Montana as well. Certain delivery of immediate but modest sanctions for repeat driving under the influence (DUI) arrestees who violate alcohol abstinence orders appear to be able to reduce future DUI arrests.
Language: en |