Susan,I have stayed very interested in this case, both personally and professionally, since I wrote you on this blog last week. As I stated in my letter last week, I feel that having DUI offenders go through counseling, MADD meetings, visits to the morgue and A.A. meetings is so much more effective than just reading a newspaper account that “another 22 year old girl is facing 5 years in jail.”Off the top of my head, I don’t know if it was the prosecutor or one of the D.A.’s witnesses who said that “they have studies that show that only the threat of jail time deters DUI offenders,” but I have to disagree with that statement. We have 700 clients in my program in Los Angeles, and of those 700 clients, many will continue to drink and drive and some will get other DUI offenses, and hopefully none will kill anybody, but the point being that we bombard our clients with statistics, show them movies, counsel them about personal responsibility, yet as stated some will continue their dangerous behavior and some will get re-arrested for it. And they all have seen statistics about DUI killers who have gotten jail time.It is a tough field. We know we’re going to fail in some cases, but we make an attempt. We have to get real with our participants, we have to tell them that if they don’t change their behavior, they will continue to put themselves and others in danger, and we have to drill those thoughts in their head. It is the personal interaction they get from counselors and clients that makes a difference to these people. I could bring in a news paper article about Jessica or I could bring in a typed note from Jessica stating all the reasons why what she did was wrong, and how she made the wrong decision, and what she could’ve done to alter her behavior, and that letter from Jessica would have far more effect on deterring our participants than a news article that she’s doing 5 years for killing someone. They see that all the time. There are people across the U.S. who are killing people by drinking and driving and getting jail time, and yet the DUI arrests in California keep going up. We bring in those articles, we talk about those articles, but those articles and thereby the punishment written about in those articles isn’t preventing DUIs or preventing DUI deaths.It is the counseling and the interaction and the clients’ experiences they have as a DUI offender, as I said before, going through the process, going to our classes, and MADD meetings and the morgue and A.A. meetings, that is more of a deterrent than reading about a faceless statistic.Someone like Jessica could’ve added to that DUI offender experience, if she was able to tell her story, in a video, through lectures or on the page. She might’ve made a personal connection which might’ve made a more lasting impression, but instead she is relegated to be a number; 5 years for a DUI murder. Yes, she needed to be punished, but her punishment could’ve been so much more effective to help prevent someone else from doing what she did.We have to look at new ways to fight DUIs, and putting one more person away in jail isn’t going to help, just like the last person who was put away in jail before Jessica killed Alex didn’t stop Jessica from making a really poor decision.Susan, I agree with one of the writers above that you have a great perspective that can help in this battle, and hopefully you won’t stop your fight against drinking and drivingCharles MorrisDirector, DUI Program
