LAW ENFORCEMENT ATTITUDES TOWARD
TREATMENT
ORIENTED SANCTIONS: DWI DRUG COURTS
This paper examines police officers' attitudes toward court-based treatment programs for DWI offenders. This exploratory study analyzes officers' attitudes, knowledge and understanding of a municipal DWI Drug Court. The municipal DWI Drug Court that serves as the focus for this research is modeled after the Miami, Florida Drug Court which was created to treat drug addicts and help them stay "clean." The DWI Drug Court is a 12 month program consisting of monthly DWI Drug Court sessions, weekly individual and group counseling sessions, AA meetings, and random drug screening.
This study found that a majority of the police officers who dealt with DWI offenders on a regular basis supported the DWI Drug Court concept. A number of factors distinguished those officers who supported the treatment program and those who did not. Those officers who consumed alcohol at least once a week were more likely to have a positive attitude toward the treatment program. A second finding was that officers who had positive attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court were more likely to use lenient behavior when stopping and questioning suspected intoxicated drivers. No significant demographic differences were found between officers who supported the DWI Drug Court and officers who did not. Although most officers indicated support for the concept of DWI Drug Courts, there is some indication that most respondents did not have an accurate and full understanding of the treatment program.
The purpose of this study is to explore police officers' attitudes toward court-based treatment programs for driving while intoxicated (DWI) offenders. Police act as gatekeepers in the criminal justice system, and their attitudes toward such treatment programs can impact their enforcement patterns of existing laws. While attitudes toward such programs are important, this study looks specifically at distinguishing characteristics between those police officers who support court-based programs for drunk drivers and those who are less likely to support such sanctions.
In following this line of thinking, a number of other important concerns are addressed. For example, this study looks at the level of knowledge about a specific court-based treatment program possessed by average patrol officers. What do they know about the program, and how accurate is their understanding of the treatment design? What factors shape their thinking? The major issue that evolves out of this line of questioning becomes: how well are the differing elements in the criminal justice system working together?
Due to the short history of court-based treatment programs, little is known about how key players within the criminal justice system feel about them. Police officers are some of the most important participants in the process. Not only do they have a great deal of authority (i.e., the decision to arrest or not to arrest), but they interact with the public on a day-to-day basis. Officers' opinions almost certainly shape their behaviors while on the job.
Past studies have found that officers' beliefs about certain individuals -- whether based on race, socio-economic status (Lundman, 1996), or gender (Hollinger, 1984) -- may influence their behavior when confronting an offender. In addition, officers' beliefs and attitudes toward legal sanctions affect their behavior while on the job (Kidder, 1983).
This study is part of a larger evaluation of the Las Cruces Municipal DWI Drug Court. This evaluation, supported by the National Institute of Justice, has six major goals: (1) the measurement of recidivism for program participants and a randomly selected control group, (2) an assessment of the program's impact on the local legal community, (3) an assessment of the program's impact on the local criminal justice community, (4) a description of the court processes involved with the drug court concept, (5) a description of the treatment modalities for both providers and participants, and (6) an examination of changes in both attitudes and self-reported behaviors among participants and the control groups.
The Las Cruces Municipal DWI Drug Court has been in operation since December 1, 1994. This court was created as a result of judicial efforts that received state and federal funding. This resulted from the concerns of the citizens of New Mexico over drunk driving rates, and a municipal judge who saw the need for a program that would reduce the rates of recidivism by repeat offenders in addition to punishing them (Liu, Simin, Siegel, Brewer, Mokdad, Sleet, & Serdual, 1997, p.124; Ryan, 1994).
The Las Cruces Municipal DWI Drug Court is the first of its kind in New Mexico, and it is also the first drug court in the nation that is located in a relatively small metropolitan area. The DWI Drug Court differs from most of the early drug courts whose focus was solely on drug abuse (heroin, crack, etc.) in that this court targets alcohol abusers. Another difference from many of the original drug courts is that the Las Cruces Municipal Court only deals with misdemeanors and not felonies as in most other drug courts (Ryan, 1994).
The DWI Drug Court successfully completed a year-long (March 1995 through March 1996) pilot group with 26 clients, 15 of whom successfully completed the program. As of 1997, the DWI Drug Court has an estimated 80 clients in varying stages of treatment. The Drug Court is an ongoing, multi-stage court where clients are added continually, and the number of new clients depends on the number of second time DWI offenders in the municipal sentencing court.
Drug Courts generally, and DWI Drug Courts specifically, are recent interventions in curbing drug and alcohol abuses. There have been no studies to date analyzing police officers' attitudes toward these treatment programs. The focus of this study is officers' attitudes and opinions toward a court-based treatment, the Las Cruces Municipal DWI Drug Court. First, we will briefly look at the drug court concept.
Drug courts are recent innovations in the U.S. court system. These courts are predicated on judicial leaders who strive to integrate both sanctions (the court) and treatments. The belief behind this merger is that offenders need treatment in addition, to or in the place of, punishment, and the "carrot and stick" approach works the best (National Institute of Justice, November 1993; National Institute of Justice, June 1993).
Drug courts differ from regular courts on several counts: (a) the judge interacts with the offender without a defense attorney and, in fact, the judge takes an almost paternal stance with the offender; (b) the main purpose behind the court meetings is to lead the offender to a life of sobriety; (c) the court is non-adversarial, in that the members of the courtroom work group are working toward the same purpose, (i. e., prosecutor, case worker and judge all work together); and (d) there is a merging of treatment services (counseling, remedial education, job counseling, and in some cases finding new housing) to fit the needs of the offenders rather than the needs of the program providers.
Court-based treatment programs have their roots in the Dade County court of Judge Stanley Goldstein based on Judge Herbert M. Klein's conceptualization of a treatment-based court. In 1989, the Florida Supreme Court realized that drug offenses and offenders were overwhelming the Florida court system. A Florida circuit judge, Herbert M. Klein, was given a year-long leave of absence to solve the problem. Judge Klein developed the concept of a court-supervised treatment program that held the offenders accountable for their actions, involved several types of treatment and additional services, had continual monitoring of the offenders, and held the threat of jail time for uncooperative offenders (National Institute of Justice, June 1993, p. 10-11). While Judge Klein conceptualized the drug court, the day-to-day monitoring of the court was given to Judge Goldstein.
At first Judge Goldstein's court only admitted offenders who where charged with their first drug offenses (usually heroin), but later he extended drug court admissions to offenders with multiple drug charges. The restrictions by the court were that the offenders could not: be dealing drugs, have a past record of violent crimes, or have two additional non-drug related felony convictions (National Institute of Justice, June 1993, p. 3).
The offender's treatment is divided into three phases: detoxification, stabilization and aftercare. The goal behind the detoxification stage is to wean the offender from physical dependency on drugs. On average this is a two to six week stage. The second stage, stabilization, relies upon getting offenders to accept that they have an addiction and to do something about it; on average this stage lasts three to six months. The goal behind the third stage, aftercare, is to aid the offenders in getting their lives back together with job skills, and to help them to find employment. The average time spent in this stage is eight to twelve months. In all three of the stages, the offender must remain drug free; dirty urine tests are considered backsliding and will be dealt with according to a series of graduated sanctions. If the offenders graduate from the program, their charges are dismissed and their records are sealed (National Institute of Justice, June 1993, p. 5). The success of the Dade County Drug Court (an estimated 60% of the 4,500 offenders who entered the treatment program between June 1989 to March 1993 have remained clean) has led other judges to create drug courts in their states.
Police attitudes and opinions toward laws are important issues in the criminal justice world and can have unintended side effects. Police are the first line of defense acting as official gatekeepers into the criminal justice system. Police officers have the power to arrest suspects, counsel and release them, or simply ignore their actions. If officers believe a law is too harsh, they may modify their arrest decisions. For example, in the 1960s Connecticut's governor pushed a very punitive speeding law through the legislature. The law stipulated that for the first speeding offense the offender's license was revoked. The national speed limit at the time was 55 mph. The majority of police officers believed that the sanction for the crime was too tough, and consequently the officers reduced their arrest rates for speeding (Kidder, 1983, p. 43). In this example, the officers' attitudes toward the punitive misdemeanor sanction influenced their behavior.
This study measures what police officers know about the DWI Drug Court, where they learned about it, and what factors account for their attitudes toward this program. This is an exploratory study to determine if there are any distinguishing characteristics of officers who support, laws or do not support the DWI Drug Court and to explore their attitudes toward alcohol treatment programs.
The first step in addressing police attitudes and perceptions is in the development of a number of measures. A questionnaire was created that was composed of seven sections along with a cover letter explaining the nature of the project. The first section measures the officers' court experiences. The first three questions asked are questions designed to engage the officers' interest.
The second section consists of demographic information. The third section is background information on DWI laws/policies. This section is designed to measure the officers' knowledge of the DWI Drug Court and the source of their knowledge. The fourth section concerns general attitudes about DWI Drug Court and DWI laws. In this area, the questions are about DWI laws and officer's cynicism and uses Likert scale statements to discover opinions. In addition, officers' attitudes toward DWI sanctions are addressed.
The fifth section measures specific attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court. This section asks the officers their opinions on the success of the DWI Drug Court and their opinions on other DWI sanctions. The sixth section asks the officers to rank DWI sanctions, and to rate the sanctions' effectiveness. The seventh section involves implementation practices, and this section contains both visual analog and open-ended (qualitative) questions. This section attempts to find out the officers' levels of leniency by using five questions (three indirectly and two directly), and some additional questions.
The survey uses forced choice five point Likert scale questions, visual analogs, multiple choice and ranking questions as well as open-ended questions on police attitudes toward DWI legislation and policies. The information given involves both ordinal and interval level data. The use of five point Likert scales for police attitude surveys has a long tradition because they are quick and easy to fill out, which fits in well with the officers' time schedules. The survey also consists of a short four question leniency index that measures officers' decisions not to arrest.
The sampled population is a census of all police officers who had the opportunity to arrest DWI offenders during March, April, and May of 1997. Due to the relatively small number of police officers who met the criterion for inclusion in our study, having arrested an intoxicated person in the past three months, a census of all such officers was attempted. The unit of analysis was the individual officers from the Local Police Department. Officers from the Sheriff's Department, the State Police, a nearby Campus Police Department, and from a Neighboring Metropolitan Police Department (where a DWI Drug Court was in existence but was cut due to funding problems) were included in the sample to standardize test scores.(1)
The data were collected by written surveys. We contacted key people at the Local Police Department, the Neighboring Metropolitan Police Department, the Campus Police, the Sheriff's Department, and State Police agencies and asked them to administer the questionnaires to officers who may have arrested drunk drivers in the past three months. The Campus Police captain distributed the surveys to his department. The Neighboring Metropolitan Police Department and the Local Police Department were surveyed in person before their shift changes, and additional surveys were given out by the Chief of Police or Lieutenant.
The patrol officers of the Local Police Department were surveyed individually during patrol briefings, while the rest of the questionnaires were endorsed by the chief of the appropriate police agency and distributed by the officers' supervisors so that they could fill out the surveys at their convenience. A total of 63 officers completed questionnaires: 32 officers from the Local Police Department, and 31 officers from other law enforcement departments. Police studies are notorious for their low response rates; for example, rates from 45% to 55% are common (Winfree, Bartku, & Seibel, 1996, p. 32). This study had an acceptable overall response rate of 58%, obtaining 63 out of 108 surveys distributed, although for three of the agencies the response rate was higher than 58%. The Local Police Department's (the agency of greatest interest here) response rate was 82%.
Developing a Measure of Police Attitude Toward the DWI Drug Court
Officers' attitudes are considered in comparison to what the officers believe is the most appropriate or effective tactic (alcohol treatment sanctions and enforcement tactics) in dealing with drunk drivers. For this survey, officers' attitudes toward alcohol treatment programs will be examined in comparison to the traditional drunk driving sanctions (e.g., fines, jail time, etc.). We are interested in determining which factors (race, religion, age, career length, personal alcohol use, and education) shape officers' attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court. The officers' attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court were tested using an attitudinal index developed by, and modified from, a 1987 study by Frank, Fagan, and Ayers.
The attitude index was separated into several indexes of individual support, external support, overall aggression, and change, as developed by Frank et al. (1987). See Table 1 for a complete list of the items in each subsection of the index.
| Table 1: Items Used in the Attitude Index Separated by Sub-Domains. | |
| Individual Support | |
| 1.* | Police officers are under more stress by having to enforce the DWI laws. |
| 2.* | The recent policy shift toward the use of the DWI Drug Court has made more work for the officers (e.g. paperwork, court appearances, etc.). |
| 3.* | The present movement to crack down on drunk drivers is an overreaction. |
| 4. | The recent policy shifts toward treatment of drunk drivers through the implementation of the DWI Drug Court has made it easier for officers to arrest DWI suspects knowing that they will get treatment. |
| 5.* | I feel more secure now about arresting DWI suspects than I did before the DWI Drug Court was established. |
| External Support | |
| 6.* | I think that the judges should follow the statutory guidelines (jail time and fines) in sentencing drunk drivers instead of treatment model of the DWI Drug Court. |
| 7.* | Since the new DWI Drug Court went into effect, fewer people are having their charges reduced by the prosecutor. |
| Overall Aggression | |
| 8. | In the past 1-3 years, most police officers in our department have increased their efforts to arrest drunk drivers. |
| 9. | In the past 1-3 years, I have become more aggressive in pursuing drunk drivers. |
| Individual Aggression | |
| 10.* | The present movement to crackdown on drunk drivers is an overreaction. |
| 11. | In the past 1-3 years, I have become more aggressive in pursuing drunk drivers. |
| Change | |
| 12.* | In the past 1-3 years, most police officers in our department have increased their efforts to arrest drunk drivers. |
| 13.* | Many officers in our department have been spending so much time with DWI arrests/cases that they have neglected important matters. |
| 14.* | Police officers are under more stress by having to enforce the DWI laws. |
| 15.* | The recent policy shift toward use of the DWI Drug Court has made more work for police officers (e.g. paperwork, court appearances, etc.). |
| 16.* | Since the DWI penalties are more severe now, I only arrest suspects who are extremely intoxicated. |
| 17. | In the past 1-3 years, I have become more aggressive in pursuing drunk drivers. |
| 18.* | I feel more secure now about arresting DWI suspects than I did before the DWI Drug Court was established. |
*Items were reverse coded when creating the index.
Individual support has been conceptualized as whether, and to what extent, the officer supports the DWI Drug Court. The summed responses of the individual support scores ranged from 5 to 17; the higher the score, the more the officer is in favor of the DWI Drug Court. The average individual support score was 12.88 with a standard deviation of 2.17. The smaller the standard deviation, the more closely the scores group around the mean.
The external support index is a measure of the extent to which the law enforcement agency supports the DWI Drug Court. The external support summed scores ranged from 4 to 10, with the higher score indicating that the agency is in favor of the DWI Drug Court. The average score for the external support was 7.68 with a standard deviation of 1.52.
The individual aggression domain is a measure of how aggressively officers enforce DWI laws. The summed individual aggression scores ranged from 2 to 7, with a higher score implying that an officer is more aggressive in enforcing DWI laws. The average score for individual support was 4.59 with a standard deviation of 1.44.
The overall aggression index is a measure of how aggressive the department is in enforcing DWI laws. The summed overall aggression score ranged from 2 to 10; the higher the score the more the agency supports enforcing DWI laws. The average overall aggression score was 5.63 with a standard deviation of 1.77.
The change index can be conceptualized as a measure of how much has changed for the officer with the DWI Drug Court. The summed change scores ranged from 7 to 31, with higher scores indicating that the officers believe that the DWI Drug Court has made more work for them. The average change score was 17.73 with a standard deviation of 3.98.
The attitude index is composed of five domains: individual support, external support, overall aggression, individual aggression, and change. The content validity for this index has been ensured by having questions that address each of the five domains conceptualized by Frank et al. (1987). To test construct validity, an alternative measure of the officers' attitudes must be found (i.e., the officers who feel negatively about the DWI Drug Court on the index should respond with negative opinions toward a second question that rates the DWI Drug Court). The correlation between the index and the second question was -.16. While this correlation was not significant, it was found to be in the negative direction hypothesized. The attitude measures of Frank et al. (1987) appear to be multidimensional. However, for this study the measures were summed to form a single attitude measure. Thus, there was little evidence of a consistent relationship with other variables and this could explain the low correlation between the two items.
It was hypothesized that the career length of an officer is negatively related to an officer's attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court. Data analysis consisted of bivariate rather than multiple regression because of the small sizes for both the sample (n=63) and the Local Police Department (n=32). Bivariate regression was run on the variables of career length and attitudes for the entire sample, and then on just the Local Police. The Local Police Department was separated from the sample because these officers are the ones mostly likely to deal with the municipal court and have greater exposure to the DWI Drug Court.
The results of the regression run were not significant for either group. The significance level of the F- test was .142 for the entire sample and .150 for the Local Police. The results of the regression run could imply at least four things:
An argument can be made that the variables are still good measures of attitudes but the significance is being masked because of the small sample size and high variability of the results. See Table 2 for the results of the bivariate regression.
Table 2: Bivariate Regression Analysis of Officers' Attitudes Toward the DWI Drug Court and Officers' Service Career.
| Independent variable
Service career |
b | S.E. | Confidence
Interval |
Significance level of F | R2 | S.E. of
Estimate |
| For Sample | .0118 | .007 | (-.003) - (.027) | .118 | .042 | 4.01 |
| For Local Police | .0176 | .012 | (-.007) - (.042) | .150 | .072 | 3.61 |
Education has been hypothesized as being positively related to the officers' attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court. Bivariate regression reveals that the results for both the entire sample and the Local Police were not significant, with significance scores of .676 and .461, respectively. However, it must be noted that the relation between education and officers' attitudes was found to be positive, as hypothesized. See Table 3 for the results of the regression run.
Table 3: Bivariate Regression Analysis of Officers' Attitudes Toward the DWI Drug Court and Officers' Education Level.
|
Independent variable Education |
b |
S.E. |
Confidence Interval |
Significance level of F |
R2 |
S.E. of
Estimate |
| For Sample | .129 | .308 | (-.488) - (.747) | .676 | .003 | 4.07 |
| For Local Police | .3 | .4 | (-.522) - (1.121) | .461 | .02 | 3.70 |
Officers' personal alcohol consumption has been hypothesized as being positively related to the officers' attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court. Bivariate regression reveals that the results were statistically significant (at a .05 level) for the entire sample with an F significance of .039, but not significant for the Local Police, with a significance level of .169.
The slope coefficient can be interpreted as for every one day increase in a week that the officer drinks alcoholic beverages there will be a corresponding .792 positive increase in the officer's support for the DWI Drug Court. The positive sign of the slope indicates that officers who drink will have more positive attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court, thus the relationship is supported as both significant and in the direction hypothesized. The standard error of the slope -- which indicates the size of the confidence interval (a measure of the goodness of fit) - is .374. The coefficient of determination can be interpreted as 7.7% of the total variation of the officers' attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court and can be explained by the amount of alcohol the officers consume per week for the study's model and sample. See Table 4 for more information about the bivariate regression results.
Table 4: Bivariate Regression Analysis of Officers' Attitudes Toward the DWI Drug Court and Officers Use of Alcohol.
|
Independent variable Use of Alcohol |
b |
S.E. |
Confidence Interval |
Significance level of F |
R2 |
S.E. of
Estimate |
| For Sample | .792 | .374 | (.043) - (1.542) | .039 | .077 | 4.00 |
| For Local Police | .564 | .398 | (-.254) - (1.381) | .169 | .069 | 3.68 |
Religion was hypothesized as being negatively related to officers' attitudes. To test this, chi-square analysis was utilized. The religion variable was divided into two categories, religious and non-religious, with the religious category being officers who attended services at least once a week and the non-religious category being officers who did not specify attending services. The attitude variable was separated at the median. An attempt was made to test attitudes and religion for both the sample and Local Police using chi-square analysis. However, the test was unsuccessful due to the excessive number of missing cases for each variable.
Officers' attitudes toward the Drug Court were assessed through two questions. Question 54 asked: What should be done with the DWI Drug Court? The possible choices were: (a) expand, (b) eliminate, (c) retain as is, (d) modify it some way. Question 54A stated: Please explain why you feel this way about the DWI Drug Court? The Local Police Department was the only group analyzed because these are the officers with the greatest potential exposure to the municipal court and consequently the DWI Drug Court. Of the 32 Local Police Department officers, 15 had positive responses, 13 had no comment, and four had negative responses to question 54.
The responses of the 15 officers with the positive attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court shared some commonalities in their answers: Three of the officers thought that the courts were doing a fair job, and three different officers felt that the courts needed to be harsher. One positive comment about the court was: "DWI is a social problem and society needs to correct it not just punish."
A further analysis of these officers with positive views toward the DWI Drug Court was attempted. The officers with positive attitudes toward the Drug Court were too diverse to get general commonalities for the entire group. However, there were some specifics: eleven out of the fifteen positive officers believed that mandatory sentencing was the most effective sanction for DWIs. Furthermore, nine of the eleven had an alcoholic friend or family member, and six of them knew individuals who had been injured in an alcohol-related accident.
Of the thirteen neutral responses, four officers did not fill the question out at all. Some of the officers made comments that the DWI Drug Court should be explained to officers, and that it should be publicized in the media. The rest (seven officers) of the sample's comments were that they did not know about the court, or what the court was, doing, and that it had not been explained to them. An example of a neutral response was "I have no idea as to what the court is doing. I didn't even know it was in existence."
The four officers with the negative opinions were as follows: two officers did not believe that we should look at drunk drivers as a social problem and that they only deserved punishment, one officer had no idea what the court was, but thought it should be eliminated anyway, and another officer thought that judges need to be more consistent when sentencing intoxicated drivers. One negative response was "Stop trying to save the world. Go back to the basics, you screw up! You pay!!"
A further analysis of the officers with negative attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court revealed that the four officers were all of Hispanic descent, all the officers were married, and all had at least one alcoholic family member or friend. Of the four officers, there were commonalities among three who were Catholic, three were patrol officers, three had been assigned to traffic duty at some point in their career, three of them knew of a friend who had been injured in an alcohol-related accident, three of them believed that the most effective DWI sanction was mandatory sentencing, and three of them held consistently negative viewpoints that the court system was too lenient.(2)
The next analysis focused on the officers' attitudes toward the normal court system and how effective a sanction it was for a DWI offender with alcohol-related problems (Question 56). The fourteen officers answered that the normal court system hindered the DWI offender. Nine officers believed that the normal system helped an offender with alcohol-related problems, and nine officers thought that the system neither helped nor hindered, or thought the court did both to the offender.
The officers who believe that the normal court procedures of mandatory jail time, fines and license suspensions help offenders with alcohol-related problems answered with themes of the offender learning the penalties (officers' comments were that it "makes them think twice," "forces them to give attention to their problems," and "People know the penalty if they do it again") or of judicial intervention with treatment programs ("It gives them a chance at treatment. If treatment doesn't work then they serve time." and "Judge usually orders alcohol counseling during sentencing").
Officers who believed that the normal court hindered drunk drivers with an alcohol-related problem had the following commonalties in their answers. In their responses, seven of the officers believed that the system failed because the offenders continued to re-offend, two of the officers believed that the court system gave the offender another reason to drink, and two of the officers thought that the normal court system does not get at the root of the problem. Officers who believed that the system fails because offenders repeat had comments like this: "They find a different way to beat the system."
There were four officers who had positive views toward both the normal court and the DWI Drug Court. These officers shared three similarities in their responses: They all learned about the DWI Drug Court from other officers, they all believed mandatory jail time was the most effective sanction for DWIs, and they had served on the Local Police Department for one to two years.
There were six officers who viewed the DWI Drug Court in a positive way, but believed that the normal court hampers offenders with alcohol-related problems. There were no commonalities for the officers in this group, except that five of the officers had an alcoholic among their friends or family members.
There were three officers who had negative attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court and positive views of the normal court. These officers shared several characteristics: They all had family members who were alcoholics, they all had friends who had been injured in an alcohol-related accident, they all believed that in normal court the offender would learn his/her lesson and, finally, they believed that the major problem with enforcing the DWI laws is that the judges and court system are too lenient on intoxicated drivers. There was one officer with negative opinions toward both the DWI Drug Court and the normal court.
Overall the officers have positive attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court when they know about it. A major problem with the questionnaires that the Local Police officers had was that it assumed they knew about the DWI Drug Court. Although the DWI Drug Court has received fair coverage by the media for the past three years of its existence, very few of the officers had specific knowledge of what types of treatment programs are involved with the offender being sentenced to the DWI Drug Court. Consistently, officers believed that the DWI Drug Court should be modified to include harsher sentences and fines. While most of the officers' knowledge of the Drug Court was obtained from other officers, it may not necessarily be an accurate knowledge of the workings of the DWI Drug Court. However, most of the officers surveyed were in favor of the Court's existence.
There were two attitude measures used in this study: one used solely for measuring officers' support for the DWI Drug Court, and the index modified and obtained from the Frank et al. (1987) study for officers' overall attitudes toward intoxicated drivers. The Local Police Department officers (n=32) were used to assess support toward the DWI Drug Court because, unlike the other departments, they attend the municipal court with greater frequency. Accordingly, they have a greater chance of gaining knowledge about the DWI Drug Court. Unfortunately, most of the factors hypothesized to affect officers' attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court were not shown to have a statistically significant impact on officers' attitudes for this study. However, future studies with larger sample sizes and multiple analytical models may find otherwise.
According to the present study, the officers' attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court were only influenced by their own level of alcohol consumed: Officers who drank at least once per week were more inclined to have positive attitudes toward the DWI Drug Court. This finding suggests that officers who consume alcoholic drinks are more inclined to view the DWI Drug Court positively, perhaps because they can sympathize with the offender more than officers who drink very little or abstain from drinking altogether. Officers who use alcohol on a weekly basis may understand how someone could become an alcoholic better than officers who do not drink at all. Consequently, drinking officers understand the need for such alcohol treatment programs. Officers who abstain from alcohol may view the DWI Drug Court as ineffective and have negative opinions toward this sanction because they do not understand the need to drink.
Overall the officers had positive opinions of the DWI Drug Court, although some of the officers who supported the DWI Drug Court may not have had complete or accurate knowledge of the court. We found that the officers seemed not have a complete understanding, based on several observations. Most officers were informed about the DWI Drug Court by their colleagues who may have given them inaccurate ideas about the Court. Another reason behind this observation was that many officers believed that the DWI Drug Court should be modified to include harsher penalties of increased fines and jail time.
In reality, the DWI Drug Court is more punitive than the normal mandatory sanctions imposed by legislation. For example, the normal court sanctions for a second time DWI in New Mexico is mandatory jail time of 72 hours to seven days and possible fines of $1,410, and for a third DWI offense there is a mandatory 30 to 60 days jail time with possible fines of up to $1,410. Most offenders who are eligible for the DWI Drug Court are repeat offenders. The DWI Drug Court is a 12 month sanction, which requires a significantly greater commitment in both time and money than for the mandatory second or third DWI offense. It is a year-long program of monthly drug court meetings and then weekly or daily group and individual therapy sessions. In addition, the judge also may impose graduated sanctions of jail time for non-compliance with the program. Compliance is based on the offender attending all the monthly Drug Court sessions and passing random urine tests. The treatment providers realize that the offenders may relapse from time to time, and the judge can adjust the sanctions accordingly; thus, an offender may go to jail two or three times during the course of the program. The offender also must pay for the programs and the fines incurred due to the DWIs, and serve the mandatory jail time allocated for the offense (e.g., mandatory 90 days for third DWI). Therefore, it appears that the program is more involved, both financially and in time than the normal court sanctions for DWIs.
The officers who believe that the program needs to be harsher in terms of jail time and fines probably do not have accurate knowledge of the DWI Drug Court. The officers' beliefs in the need for harsher sanctions may be motivated by their view that mandatory sentencing is the most effective and appropriate sanction for intoxicated drivers, followed by license suspensions and fines. This study shows that officers in this sample, while continuing to support harsher DWI sanctions, are not adverse to the idea of rehabilitation and treatment for the intoxicated drivers.
The implication of this study is that most officers support the DWI Drug Court, but the factors behind their support have still not been identified. Regardless of why they support the Court, it appears that the officers are as not uniformly against treatment-oriented sanctions as suggested by the literature. A possible reason why some officers support the DWI Drug Court is because they know the program is harsher than the normal court sanctions. A policy suggestion would be for all officers to be briefed accurately (by the treatment providers if possible) about the DWI Drug Court, because their attitudes toward sanctions can influence their behaviors in arresting intoxicated drivers. The officers may need to get involved with the progress of the DWI Drug Court, that is attending the DWI Drug Court monthly or at least every two months to see how the offenders are doing. The officers might be more supportive of the DWI Drug Court if they saw how the court deals with the successes and failures of the offenders.
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Hollinger, R. C. (1984). Race, occupational status, and pro-active police arrests for drinking and driving. Journal of Criminal Justice, 12,173-183.
Kidder, L. R. (1983). Connecting Law and Society: An Introduction to Research and Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Line.
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1. pseudonyms used for participating agencies
2. Note, none of the groups of
three had the same composition of officers.