Police Documentation of Drunk Driving Arrests, 1984-1987: Los Angeles, Denver, and Boston
Description
These data measure the effects of blood alcohol content
coupled with officer reports at the time of arrest on driving while
intoxicated (DWI) case outcomes (jury verdicts and guilty
pleas). Court records and relevant police reports for drunk-driving
cases drawn from the greater metropolitan areas of Boston, Denver, and
Los Angeles were compiled to produce this data collection. Cases were
selected to include roughly equal proportions of guilty pleas, guilty
verdicts, and not-guilty verdicts. DWI cases were compared on the
quality and quantity of evidence concerning the suspect's behavior,
with the evidence coming from any mention of 20 standard visual
detection cues prior to the stop, 13 attributes of general appearance
and behavior immediately after the stop, and the results of as many as
7 field sobriety tests. Questions concerned driving-under-the-influence
cues (scoring sheet), observed traffic violations and actual traffic
accidents, the verdict, DWI history, whether the stop resulted from
an accident, whether the attorney was public or private, and sanctions
that followed the verdict. Also included were demographic questions on
age, sex, and ethnicity.