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Short-Term Effectiveness of an Alcohol Ignition Interlock Programme: A Retrospective Cohort Study in the Netherlands

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Fig. 1
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Notes

  1. After 2014, the Dutch license issuing authority stopped mandating the alcohol ignition interlock programme. First, because this was found to be contrary to the ne bis in idem principle (i.e., a person cannot be punished and be subject to several procedures twice for the same facts) and second, because the license issuing authority could not take into account individual differences between drivers, so that the programme had a much greater impact on one participant than on the other.

  2. In practice, the interlock programme was implemented in the Netherlands until September 2014. Following a decision of the Court of Appeal of The Hague on 22 September 2014, all AIIP-files were postponed. When the Council of State decided in March 2015 that the interlock programme could no longer be imposed, all these cases were retroactively converted into another administrative measure (i.e., the Educational Measure for Alcohol and Traffic (in Dutch: Educatieve Maatregel Alcohol en verkeer [EMA]) or a fitness-to-drive test (in Dutch: onderzoek geschiktheid) depending on the seriousness of the DUI-offence).

  3. I.e., a violation of article 8 or article 163 of the Traffic Regulations Act 1994 (in Dutch: Wegenverkeerswet 1994 [WVW 1994]).

  4. If the criminal case consists of more than one offence, the date of the earliest offence determines the moment of recidivism.

  5. The criminal career starts at twelve at the earliest, the minimum age of criminal liability in the Netherlands.

  6. Violations of the Traffic Regulations Act 1994, the Traffic Code or the Motor Vehicle Liability Insurance Act (with the exception of article 30 paragraph 2). For example crimes like hit-and-run accidents, but also misdemeanours like serious speeding (exceedances of at least 30 km/h) or actually driving without insurance. Behaviours that fall under the Traffic Regulations Administrative Enforcement Act (in Dutch: Wet administratiefrechtelijke handhaving verkeersvoorschriften [Wahv]), e.g., minor speeding violations and red light negation, are not included in the judicial documentation and do not count as (traffic) offences.

  7. E.g., theft, vandalism, or public violence offences.

  8. In the case of categorical variables (e.g., gender, criminal sanction), a separate t-test is conducted for each category of the respective variable.

  9. Interlock participants who completed the program (either successfully or due to early termination) or who passed away during the program are no longer at risk of recidivism during the program. The same applies to individuals in the license suspension group who passed away before the end of the observation period. Treating them if they were still at risk would overestimate the recidivism risk (Schuster et al., 2020). Therefore we treated successful programme completion, dropout, and decease as competing events. Furthermore, interlock participants for whom the program was terminated due to the overall discontinuation of the ASP in the Netherlands were lost to follow-up (i.e., right-censored). They were followed for as long as they participated in the programme.

  10. If a situation arises where the various criteria contradict each other, then we opt for the model featuring the variable that provides the most accurate univariate prediction of DUI recidivism considering the AIC, BIC, LL, and Pearson’s chi-square (χ2).

  11. More precisely, the standardized percentage bias is defined as the percentage difference of the sample means in the full (pre-matching) or matched (post-matching) interlock group and the license suspension group as a percentage of the square root of the average of the sample variances in the full (pre-matching) or matched (post-matching) interlock group and the license suspension group (formulae from Rosenbaum & Rubin, 1985).

  12. For example for \(H\left(X_1\right)=\left\{a_1, a_2\right\}\) and \(H\left(X_2\right)=\left\{b_1, b_2, b_3\right\}, H\left(X_1\right) \times H\left(X_2\right)=\)\(\left\{\left(a_1, b_1\right),\left(\left(a_1, b_2\right),\left(\left(a_1, b_3\right),\left(a_2, b_1\right),\left(a_2, b_2\right),\left(a_2, b_3\right)\right\}\right.\right.\).

  13. The AIIP can only start after the criminal driving ban has ended.

  14. We account for the presence of competing events and incomplete observation periods by employing competing risk regression analysis. Additionally, we address differences in the composition of the groups by applying a matching procedure.

  15. This percentage is based on an actual count of 39 recidivists two years after the interlock programme.

    commenced and the interlock device was installed.

  16. These percentages are based on actual counts of 99 and 179 recidivists, respectively, one and two years after the date when the AIIP was canceled.

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Blom, M., Weijters, G. Short-Term Effectiveness of an Alcohol Ignition Interlock Programme: A Retrospective Cohort Study in the Netherlands. Eur J Crim Policy Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-024-09577-x

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