An Evaluation of a Community Service Sanction for DWI: The Baton Rouge Community Service Work Program. Volume 2
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Summary
This report evaluates the Baton Rouge Community Service Work Program (CSWP), a sanction for Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) offenders that requires community service in lieu of jail time. The study, conducted by the Northwestern University Traffic Institute for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, addresses the lack of empirical data on the effectiveness of alternative DWI sanctions. Specifically, it investigates whether community service serves as an effective general deterrent (influencing the general public) and specific deterrent (influencing individual offenders), and assesses its impact on the adjudication system. The methodology involved a one-year field study in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, beginning in late 1984. To measure general deterrence, researchers implemented a city-wide Public Information and Education (PI&E) campaign to raise awareness of the community service sanction, which had previously received little media attention. Effectiveness was measured through three waves of public surveys assessing awareness and attitudes, alongside time-series analyses of surrogate measures for alcohol-related accidents (e.g., single-vehicle fatal accidents) and comparisons with other Louisiana jurisdictions. To measure specific deterrence, the study compared the driving records (accidents and violations) of two groups of DWI offenders: those who received community service and those who did not, analyzing recidivism patterns before and after the sanction. Additionally, interviews with judges, police, prosecutors, and probation officers evaluated operational impacts on the legal system. The findings indicate that the PI&E campaign significantly increased public awareness of the community service sanction. However, this increased awareness did not translate into significant changes in driving behavior. Self-reported data and comparisons with other jurisdictions showed no significant reduction in DWI-related behaviors. While time-series analysis revealed decreases in some surrogate measures, such as single-vehicle fatal accidents and the percentage of drivers who had been drinking in fatal accidents, these results were not definitive enough to claim a broad deterrent effect. Regarding specific deterrence, comparisons between offenders who received community service and those who did not failed to show any significant differences in subsequent accident or violation rates. Interviews with key personnel revealed no major organizational or operational problems with the program’s implementation. The study concludes that while community service is a viable alternative to jail that avoids overcrowding and is operationally feasible, it lacks evidence of significant deterrent value. Neither general deterrence through public awareness nor specific deterrence through offender recidivism showed substantial improvement attributable to the sanction. The results suggest that simply substituting jail with community service, without enhancing the perceived severity or certainty of punishment, may not effectively reduce DWI behavior. This highlights the need for further research into the attributes that make alternative sanctions effective deterrents.
Key finding
Community service sanctions for DWI offenders did not produce significant changes in general driving behavior or specific recidivism rates, although public awareness of the sanction increased significantly.
Methodology
mixed_methods
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
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| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
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| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 19 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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- Applied Guidance: countermeasure evaluation