one of MADD South Carolina’s Court Monitoring Specialists. Volunteers monitor DUI cases by attending DUI hearings or by researching DUI cases online through the South Carolina Judicial Department’s Public Index database, completing Court Monitoring forms, and returning them to the Court Monitoring Specialist for review and data entry. Currently, MADD South Carolina only has two full-time and one part-time staff person for our Court Monitoring Program, across all seven counties. Volunteers can be a crucial part of MADD’s success, however the majority of the data collected in this report was monitored by the Court Monitoring Specialists. Volunteer recruitment to supplement the staff’s work is ongoing.
Quantitative Data Collection
The Court Monitoring Program data were obtained from three sources: 1) MADD Court Monitoring forms completed in court by MADD South Carolina staff and volunteers, 2) the South Carolina Judicial Department’s Public Index database, and 3) municipal cases records located on their individual websites. Data from the MADD Court Monitoring forms were collected from four categories: 1) case information, 2) charges, 3) sanctions/sentence, and 4) comments. Case information included, but was not limited to, defendant’s name, date of birth and the name of the court where proceeding was held. Charges included the original charge, the amended charge (if applicable), final charge and the arresting agency. Sanctions/sentences imposed included, but were not limited to, jail time, fines, ignition interlock, license revocation/suspension and probation. Comments provided additional case information. Information collected by MADD South Carolina staff and volunteers was verified through records accessed through the South Carolina Judicial Department’s Public Index database. The database provided DUI case information, charges and sanctions. The data obtained from the Public Index was compared to the data recorded by MADD South Carolina staff and volunteers to assure accuracy of the data collected. The data in this report are from DUI cases (initiated by a DUI arrest) scheduled to be heard in chosen magistrate and municipal courts in Berkeley, Charleston, Greenville, Horry, Lexington, Richland, and Spartanburg Counties from January 2016 to August 2020. As noted earlier, we began in each county at different times with Greenville and Richland being among our original counties and Lexington and Spartanburg being the most recently added (early 2019). This report is the third that MADD has generated from this project with the first report being released in 2017 and second in 2018. However, these earlier reports were only for our four original counties. This report will be the first to include Berkeley, Charleston, Horry, Lexington, and Spartanburg Counties. The courts we monitored were chosen based on availability of access to court rosters, frequency of court hearings and the number of DUI cases heard in court. The courts most frequently monitored were the magistrate courts in our focus counties. The difficulty with the municipal courts was a lack of access to court rosters and wide
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