None of the 113 people convicted since 2000 of serious drunken driving charges in Washoe County were ordered to install an alcohol-testing device in their cars, despite a state law requiring judges to do so, a Reno Gazette-Journal investigation found.

Department of Parole and Probation officials and prosecutors have not recommended the installation of ignition interlock devices to judges at sentencing, and judges have not been ordering them. A 1997 Nevada law requires them for all drunken-driving convictions in which someone is seriously hurt or killed, the RGJ investigation found.

Laurel Stadler, president of the Nevada chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said she is outraged the law was being ignored.

“We have this tool that will take the decision to drive or not out of the hands of the drunk driver and put that decision in an unbiased mechanical third party, but no one’s using it,” she said. “The tool is proven. The tool is available, and yet it’s being disregarded.”

All of the 113 cases analyzed by the Reno Gazette-Journal should have included the device in sentencing. In about half of those cases, the person convicted had previously been arrested for drunken driving and was a repeat offender, according to records reviewed by the RGJ.

The law also would apply in a person’s third drunken-driving conviction or when an offender’s blood-alcohol content was exceptionally high. Prosecutors said they had 314 such cases last year in Washoe County.

States that require the use of the interlock device have seen a 65 percent reduction in repeat drunken-driving offenses, said Philip Cook, a professor of public policy at Duke University whose research focuses on alcohol control policies.

“They are useful when they are used,” Cook said. “The problem is getting the judges to order them. Nothing about the interlock cures you, but it does delay the action we’re all concerned about — the interlock prevents people from driving drunk.”
Why not?

Washoe District Judge Jerry Polaha said he has never ordered the device in a DUI death or injury case.

Source