Idaho and Nevada are the only Western states that send people to prison for more multiple drunken-driving convictions, a consultant says.
Driving while intoxicated becomes a felony with the third conviction within five years. In a report to Gov. Phil Batt three months ago, Christopher Murray and Associates of Seattle says most states don't treat drunken driving as a felony.The report was commissioned as part of the governor's research into alternative sentencing as a way to slow the state's burgeoning prison costs.
Six Western states have penalties up to a year and five have penalties up to 180 days, the report says.
Conservative Utah has the least severe penalty for driving while intoxicated. At the fourth conviction, the offender goes to jail for 30 to 90 days.
Drunken driving is never a felony in Washington, no matter the number of convictions. Asotin County, Wash., deputy prosecutor Ben Nichols said the maximum penalty for driving while intoxicated is a year in jail, and that would be for the third or fourth conviction.
"I think 365 days is a long time to spend in jail where there are no injuries, no wreck and no property damage," he said.
Most people arrested for drunken driving have had little contact with law enforcement. Nichols said for most drivers, a 24-hour stay in the county jail can be a serious consequence and require much higher vehicle insurance rates for the next five years.
In Ada County, judges generally don't send drunken drivers to prison until the fifth conviction, unless the offender has committed other felonies or the drunken driving incident caused injury to someone, said Joseph Filicetti, legal counsel for the Boise Police Department.
At Lewiston, Nez Perce county judges are more likely to send offenders to prison after the third conviction, said prosecutor Jamie Shropshire, if they have committed other crimes, failed in treatment programs or injured someone while driving drunk.
"The courts will give us a few tries at substance abuse treatment to treat the problem," she said. "If you are coming in for your third or fourth felony, you are going to prison."
About 370 people are in Idaho prisons for felony drunken driving. That share of the prison population has remained stable for the past 21/2 years.
Batt was considering reducing felony drunken driving to a misdemeanor as a way to cut prison costs and overcrowding, but ultimately rejected the change.
"More people are injured by drunk drivers than in all other felonies combined," Batt said when issuing his alternative sentencing proposals. "We just must be tough on this menace to our lives."