Don't Drink and Drive on Saint Patrick's Day - 03/16/10 >This is meant to be a Public Service Reminder for tomorrow March 17th.

On this St. Patrick's Day, with increased numbers of impaired drivers taking to the roads; we must ask ourselves a critical question: Why aren't we doing more to hold these drivers accountable and make our roads safer?

Across the nation there are more than two million impaired drivers with three or more DUII convictions and a staggering 400,000 with five or more. Research has shown that these drivers pose the greatest risk of death on our roads. We should all be concerned that repeat DUII offenders are driving among us every day. Clearly, traditional sentencing has had little effect on their behavior.

We continue to dedicate valuable resources to incarcerating these individuals and we see zero return on our investment. Incarceration alone does not work. It does not address the underlying cause of their behavior: alcohol addiction. These offenders must be held accountable for their actions but they also must be given intensive long-term alcohol treatment.

This is precisely the work taking place every day in the Clackamas County DUII Treatment Court. Our DUII Court is an ‘accountability court.' We target offenders most likely to cause a fatality on the road. These hardcore offenders have a prior DUII conviction or are arrested with a blood alcohol content of .15 or higher. Our specially trained DUII Court team provides the necessary structure for our participants to be successful. They are regularly tested for alcohol use, required to appear weekly in court, and receive incentives for doing well and sanctions for not living up to their obligations to themselves and this community. But accountability is only half the strategy; participants also receive rigorous treatment combined with program requirements that encourage not just sobriety, but lifestyle changes that encourage long-term recovery. This combination of close supervision and intense treatment has been proven to get repeat offenders to stop drinking and driving. One recent study found that repeat offenders who have participated in DUII Court are nineteen times less likely to drink and drive than DUII offenders in traditional court.

Since the inception of the Clackamas County DUII Treatment Court in June 2006, we have had a total of 45 graduates. There are currently 39 participants in the program.

Repeat DUII offenders are fueled by an addiction to alcohol. These drivers are the most likely to be involved in a fatal accident and the least likely to change their behavior with traditional sentencing. The Clackamas County DUII Treatment Court is meeting this problem head on and making our community a safer place.