| Abstrakt: |
The offense of drunken driving has been given increased attention in the past several years, and much of this attention has been directed toward criminal penalties for the behavior--making these penalties more likely to occur and more harsh when they are actually meted Out, as well as quickening the whole process. In other words, a deterrence model of the criminal law has been increasingly employed by policy makers to deal with the problem. This research utilized a panel design to develop a causal model of the drinking driver which included both modern deterrence theory variables and selected socio-demographic variables found to be significantly related to self-reported drinking-driving behavior. Findings indicated that: 1) informal sanctions are better predictors of self-reported behavior than are formal ones, and 2) younger, single individuals who drink frequently are more likely to engage in the behavior than older, married individuals who drink less frequently. Implications of these findings for modern deterrence research and policy decisions concerning the problem of drunken driving are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
