| Probation, as one of largest parts in community-based correction, deserves attention because the contemporary criminal justice system utilizes it more often than before for punishment of non-serious offenders, and it is also the case for offenders sentenced for a driving while intoxicated offense. While there have been numerous studies conducted about the factors influencing the success rates for DWI offenders, the examined factors were mostly limited to individual or sentence-related indicators based on deterrence theory. Also, only a few recidivism studies have observed the impact of multilevel factors, both individual- and community-level factors, on recidivism of offenders released from prison. With two theoretical perspectives, deterrence and social disorganization, the purpose of this study was to investigate the specific deterrence effect of criminal justice policies on the probability of recidivism for felony-level DWI offenders by examining multilevel factors.;This study utilized individual and court-related data from the Harris County Justice Information Management System (JIMS) and community-level data from the 2000 U.S. Census. The subjects consisted of a cohort of offenders charged for a felony DWI offense in Harris County during 2000, which included 370 offenders sentenced to probation while 22 of them were sentenced for a misdemeanor. The main analysis technique of this study was a series of event history analysis models (e.g., life table, Cox proportional hazard regression, log-normal, and log-logistic analyses) in addition to univariate (descriptive) and bivariate (t-test and cross-tabulation) analyses. The dependent variable was the elapsed time between sentencing of probation and the revocation of probation. The individual-level independent variables were measured by indicators representing severity, certainty, and swiftness of punishment and by other court-related indicators, such as prior criminal history and completion of court-ordered DWI education programs. Also, poverty, employment, family disruption, proportion of blacks, residential instability, and population density were included in the analyses as community-level independent variables.;The findings of this study provided partial support for the deterrence theory, especially, for severity and certainty of the punishment, while there existed no significant relationship between swiftness of punishment and the probability of failure on probation for felony-level DWI offenders. Moreover, contextual variables did not have a significant relationship with the recidivism of DWI offenders. As a conclusion, this study suggested that legislatures and practitioners in the criminal justice system consider severe and certain punishment as well as implementation of effective DWI education programs in developing policies for the purpose of reducing recidivism of DWI offenders. |
