Alcoholism and the Courts: Experience With a Traffic Safety Project

The authors describe a federally funded Alcohol Safety Action Project in Texas that attempted to change the drinking behavior of individuals arrested for driving while intoxicated. The project was one of more than 35 around the nation designed to deal with the problem of the drinking driver; unlike many others, its primary emphasis was on rehabilitation. The project functioned as a self-supported ancillary agency to the probation department; however, because of problems in coordination with the legal system, it had access to only about a fourth of the DWI offenders. Despite that drawback, and the inability to prove the value of the projects by the federal evaluation criteria initially set, the authors believe that the experience in Texas has demonstrated the advantages of combining the efforts of the judicial and the health-care systems to deal with alcohol abuse.