Harsher punishment for drunk drivers has led to an overabundance of incarcerations, but no significant decrease in driving under the influence until now, a review of recent crime and jail records from Taichung showed.
Following the amendments made to the Criminal Code that came into force last year, a third drunk-driving conviction would result in a jail sentence with no statute of limitations on the calculation of repeated offenses.
The legal changes — which also increased the penalty for refusing breathalyzer tests — have led to a drop in breathalyzer noncompliance, but the percentage of drunk drivers charged with public endangerment has remained the same, Taichung Police Department data showed.
Photo: Liao Yao-tung, Taipei Times
In 2021, 44 percent of all drunk drivers stopped by Taichung police were charged with public endangerment, while 47 percent of them were charged with the crime in the following year, when the new version of the law was promulgated, the data showed.
People jailed for charges related to drunk driving made up 35 percent of the prisoners at the Nantou branch of the Taichung Prison, outpacing the 19 percent jailed for narcotics charges, the facility said on Tuesday.
A large share of the drunk drivers had been in prison before for the same crime, and one of the inmates is serving their seventh prison sentence for driving under the influence, it said, adding that there were 360 drunk drivers who had to be transferred to another prison this year due to exceeding the capacity.
Convicts on drunk-driving charges, the largest inmate population in the facility, are offered a rehabilitation program for alcohol use that takes in up to 20 people per phase, the facility said.
The program provides therapy, physical activity, art and instructions in law and nutritional knowledge, while preparations are on the way to open an alcohol abuse clinic in cooperation with Tsao-tung Psychiatric Center in Nantou by the end of the month at the earliest, it said.
Many repeat offenders of drunk-driving laws are estranged from their families and live in poverty, resulting in loneliness and low self-esteem that leads to relapse into substance use after release, the facility said.
The prison branch has a program to encourage family visits to help drunk-driving offenders repair their personal relationships with the hope of steering them toward recovery, it said.
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