MADD’s Court Monitoring Program enlists court monitors to observe and document what happens in the courtroom during impaired driving case proceedings. The program was created to ensure that impaired driving offenders are prosecuted and justice is achieved. Court monitoring is a tool proven to affect the adjudication process and is recognized by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as an effective countermeasure to reduce impaired driving 1 . Court monitors on the local scale can impact the
handling of impaired driving cases by their mere presence in the court room. Court monitoring is intended to enhance transparency and accountability within the criminal justice system and reduce the likelihood of repeat offenses. One way this goal is achieved is by sharing data and observations with law enforcement, judges, prosecutors, and the public to promote awareness of impaired driving and ensure accountability for all impaired driving offenders. To reduce future offenses, MADD® supports swift and unbiased treatment of all impaired driving cases. 1 Richard, C. M., Magee, K., Bacon-Abdelmoteleb, P., & Brown, J. L. (2018, April). Countermeasures that work: A highway safety countermeasure guide for State Highway Safety Offic- es, Ninth edition (Report No. DOT HS 812 478). Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Illinois staff and volunteers monitored nearly 9,000 DUI cases in Illinois across 44 different counties in 2020. By the end of the year, roughly 5,300 cases had been opened and another 3,500 cases had been closed, meaning there was some type of disposition recorded in each of those cases. Overall, this report shows that impaired driving is still a serious offense that takes place on Illinois roadways every day. All the following data represents only of the cases that were monitored by MADD. It is important to note that not every case nor every county was monitored by MADD or had a Court Monitoring presence. A few important takeaways from this report shows: roughly 18% of known cases involved drugs other than alcohol, most offenders were male and typically in the 21-29 age group, and about 70% of all cases monitored by MADD that have been adjudicated resulted in a guilty conviction.
Illinois State Report (reporting period: 1/1/2020 – 12/31/2020)
This report is designed to present observations and trends relative to the counties monitored and is not intended to be a statistical analysis.
Pending Cases Monitored:
5,347 3,576
59%
Adjudicated Cases Monitored:
41%
8,923
Total Cases Monitored in 2020:
*Pending cases are cases waiting a judgement result.
Of all the DUI cases monitored by MADD, there were about 7,200 where the gender of the offender was known (80%). Of these cases, about 72% were cases involving male offenders and roughly 28% of cases involved female offenders. According to the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office, the breakdown of male and female drivers is essentially a 50/50 split. According to the cases monitored by MADD, 5% of DUI arrests involved underage drinkers which is an alarm- ingly high rate. The age group with the greatest DUI rate was 21-29, which represented about 32% of all cases. It is important to note that of all cases monitored, males in the 21-29 age group represented 23% of all cases, thus making this age range of males the most represented group of all cases. With the cases being broken down by decade, the represented number of DUIs dropped successively with each group. With young people being so representative in this data for DUI offenses, prevention education should continue to be impressed on individuals at young ages to try and prevent this behavior.
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