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Judicial Disobedience of the Mandate to Imprison Drunk Drivers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

H. Laurence Ross  and
James P. Foley
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Abstract

We report here the results of two empirical studies of laws mandating a jail term of forty-eight consecutive hours for repeat-offender drunk drivers. 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 actors in the criminal justice system.

Type
Research Notes
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , 1987 , pp. 315 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 The Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

A grant from the Indiana Governor's Task Force to Reduce Drunk Driving supported research for this paper. Research on New Mexico was sponsored by a grant from the New Mexico Traffic Safety Bureau.

References

References

ANDENAES, Johannes (1974) Punishment and Deterrence. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
CHEVIGNY, Paul (1969) Police Power: Police Abuses in New York City. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
GUSFIELD, Joseph R. (1981) The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
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ROSS, H. Laurence (1976) “The Neutralization of Severe Penalties: Some Traffic Law Studies,” 10 Law & Society Review 403.Google Scholar
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Statutes Cited

Alcohol Traffic Safety Programs Pub. L. 97-364 (1982).Google Scholar
Ind. Code Ann. § 9-11-3-4 (West 1983).Google Scholar
N.M. Stat. Ann. 66-8-102E (1984).Google Scholar