Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
This paper is about the administration of justice in drunk driving cases. It is the second in a series (Little, 1971a) stemming from an intensive study of law enforcement and judicial systems in operation. The data reported here were obtained in 1970 and 1971 in a study carried out in the State of Vermont with the purpose of learning about how justice is administered in DWI cases in the context of a known legal framework. The method of the study was to obtain representative samples of DWI offenders and violators of other serious motor vehicle offenses, and trace what happened to them with the police, in the courts and with licensing agencies. The complete chronicle of what happened to each offender was carefully scrutinized, beginning with the time of arrest and ending when the case had been disposed of. The earlier paper contained a number of preliminary descriptive statistics, and this one follows up that background with more detailed analysis.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This paper is a revised version of one presented to the Conference of North American Judges Association in Tucson, Nov. 16, 1971. The study reported here was conducted under the auspices of the Vermont Department of Mental Health under a grant from the Council on Law Related Studies of Cambridge, Massachusetts.