Deterrence Of The Drinking Driver

Policing and Punishing the Drinking Driver is at one level about the impact of specific drinking-driving countermeasures (punishments imposed by courts on convicted offenders and random breath testing) in a particular place (New South Wales, Australia) in two particular years (1972 and 1983). At another level, however, the research reported herein is concerned with general questions of deterrence, and with the impact of the criminal justice system on the perception and behavior of a broad cross-section of the population. In contrast to much of the research in the drink-drive field, the research questions concentrate on the psychological and sociological processes whereby behavior is altered in the short-term as the result of a massive legal intervention or as the result of the routine imposition of legal punishments.

The author of this book argues that drunk driving is more than just a criminal issue. He offers a practical approach to the problem of drunk driving, one that combines criminal deterence with other efforts to reduce the number of deaths caused by drivers under the influence of alcohol.

First published in 1996. The Southern Subculture of Drinking and Driving is part of the Criminal Justice series. Volumes in the Current Issues in Criminal Justice series focus on scholarship, original thought and research, and readability. This one is no different. Julian B. Roebuck and Komanduri S. Murty have produced a volume that will be of vital interest to those who study and create policy on drunken driving ・ one of the more enduring social problems of the past two decades. The volume has two major components that make it unique in the drunken driving literature. First, Roebuck and Murty focus on drunken drivers themselves and, through the use of a large dataset, add to our knowledge of that group of people by describing their characteristics. Second, and perhaps more important, Roebuck and Murty delve into the phenomenology of the drunken driver through a lengthy interview process.