Reoffending Analysis for Participants who completed the Course for Drink Drive Offenders 2010 to 2013

This Research and Statistical Bulletin was commissioned by the Department for Infrastructure (NI) and produced by the Department of Justice (NI).

In Northern Ireland if a person is convicted of a drink driving offence, the courts can refer them to a course aimed at targeting these behaviours.

To assess the impact of the Course for Drink Drive Offenders (CDDO) on reoffending, a treatment group of participants who had completed CDDO between January 2010 and December 2013 was compared to a matched control group.

Further analysis was completed to compare a treatment group of participants who were referred to CDDO between January 2010 and December 2013, but who did not complete the programme.

In both cases the matched control group was made up of people who had neither been referred to nor completed the course but had engaged in similar drink drive offences during this time period.

Key findings:

• The current analysis indicates that completing the Course for Drink Drive Offenders significantly reduced the one, two and three year reoffending rates of course completers compared to a matched sample of non-attending offenders.

• The differences in the one, two and three year reoffending rates for those who were referred but did not attend and their matched sample were not statistically significant.