Today The American Journal of Public Health published an article on a three-year study done by the RAND Corporation that looked at the impact of South Dakota’s 24/7 Sobriety Project on alcohol-related crime.
The study was conducted by the RAND Corporation’s Drug Policy Research Center. According to Dr. Beau Kilmer, a senior policy researcher at RAND and the lead researcher, the study showed that the program had a positive impact on problem drinking and public health outcomes.
The study, which had support from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, found that the program has helped reduce repeat drunk driving offenses by 12%, domestic violence offenses by 9%, and the number of traffic crashes for males between the ages of 18 and 40 by 4%. Evidence suggests that this program is re-engineering the way the criminal justice system manages alcohol offenders.
The 24/7 Project, introduced by former South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long in 2006, has been replicated in a number of other states, including North Dakota and Montana. In 2012 the 24/7 Sobriety Project model was incorporated into a new Federal Impaired Driving Countermeasure, MAP-21, which provides states with Federal funding for programs deemed to have the most potential to impact impaired driving.
The 24/7 Sobriety Project model requires participants to abstain from consuming or possessing alcohol and mandates frequent testing to enforce it. Specifically, participants are ordered by the court to supervised twice-a-day breath testing at a local law enforcement location or to be monitored by continuous, transdermal alcohol monitoring using SCRAMx monitoring bracelets. The program also requires participants to be tested for the presence of drugs.
Additional Resource:
Study Q & A: http://www.rand.org/health/feature/24-7.html
