ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — In courtrooms around the country, judges are teaming up with prosecutors, defense attorneys, parole officers and substance abuse counselors to make long-term changes in the behavior of people with multiple arrests for impaired driving.
DWI or DUI courts are among the growing number of accountability courts that states are using to treat the root causes of criminal activity. The courts target hardcore offenders who drive with a blood alcohol content of 0.15 percent or higher or who are arrested multiple times for driving while intoxicated.
The DUI court in Athens was the first in Georgia and one of the first in the country. It is one of four "academy courts" selected by the National Center for DWI Courts to serve as a national model and hosted a training program for judges and court personnel this week.
"We try to redirect people who have been trained in the adversarial system into a system that now recognizes the source of some of the dysfunction and how to deal with the various and multiple sources of that dysfunction," said retired Judge Michael Kavanaugh, senior director of the National Center for DWI Courts.
Simply punishing these offenders with fines or jail time is generally not effective because they will continue to be dependent on alcohol and have a relatively high chance of driving while impaired again, Kavanaugh said.
As of June 2014, there were 690 DWI courts with others in the works, according to the National Center for DWI Courts.
People with repeated DUI or DWI convictions are frequently wealthier and more educated than other offenders and are often highly functioning members of society with good jobs, Kavanaugh said. Because their drug of choice, alcohol, tends to be accepted by society, the initial denial of a problem is one of the biggest hurdles, he said.
A main feature of a DWI court is that everyone — including the judge, the lawyers for both sides, counselors and probation officers — works together as a team to identify a treatment program and help the offender stay on track, said retired Judge Kent Lawrence, who started the Athens DUI court in February 2001 and now helps train others.
One of the most important things, Lawrence said, is holding participants accountable but also preserving their dignity.
"You've got to get to know them and you've got to respect them and they've got to respect you," he said. "It's a two-way street."
The program, which generally spans one to two years, is rigorous and requires an enormous commitment from the participants, said Judge Charles Auslander, who took over the Athens court when Lawrence retired in 2011. They have individual and group counseling sessions, a court date every two weeks, check-ins with a probation officer and must stay sober, Auslander said.
Some participants struggle at first and a small minority drop out, but it's rewarding to see the major transformations many undergo, Auslander said.
"If you can keep them engaged and they start feeling better and things are going better in their life and their brain starts healing, you're going to have a much greater chance of success," Auslander said.
Unlike some accountability courts that function as pretrial diversion programs and allow participants to have their charges dismissed if they complete a set of requirements, DWI courts begin with a conviction that stays on the person's record.
"The crime of DWI is different," Kavanaugh said. "It is a crime that exposes the general public to a far greater risk of something extremely terrible happening.
