Judicial Disobedience of the Mandate to Imprison Drunk Drivers

• NCJ Number: 107088
• Journal: Law and Society Review Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Dated: (1987) Pages: 315-323
• Author(s): H L Ross; J P Foley
• Date Published: 1987
• Length: 9 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Indiana Governor's Task Force To Reduce Drunk Driving
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

We report here the results of 2 empirical studies of laws mandating a jail term of 48 consecutive hours for repeat-offender drunk drivers.

Abstract

In both cases, noncompliance by judges, abetted by other criminal justice system actors, was extensive, and substantial proportions of offenders were not imprisoned as mandated. We explain these findings as evidence of both a disjunction between formal and operative definitions of the behavior in question -- drunk driving -- and the great difficulty of controlling the discretion of the actors in the criminal justice system. (Publisher abstract)