Increase in Arrests of Female Drunk Drivers
According to the National Highway Transportation Satety Administration (NHTSA) there has been an increase in the number of women being arrested for drunk driving. Their numbers show an increase of 30% in the numbers of arrests of women for DUI between 1998 and 2007. They show a decrease of 7.5% in the number of arrests of men for DUI during the same time period , although in total numbers men still get arrested four times as often as women for DUI.
All of the alarm by the media and bloggers since the release of this information seems to assume (and often actually state) that women are drinking more, instead of the much more likely scenario that now when women are caught by the police they are not being let go like the old days. No more crying, flirting, calling the husband, parking the car by the side of the road and being let off with a warning by Officer Nice Guy. Thanks to Mothers Against Drunk Driving the DUI laws get progressively more serious every year. So, courtrooms are no longer filled with 20 year old to 50 year old men. Now there are alot more women. Now, there are teenagers and grandmothers side by side. Things are as they should be.
That may seem like an odd statement from a criminal defense attorney, especially a female one, but the truth is that the best law is the one that is applied evenly across society without bias. No racial, gender or age profiling. If we could achieve that for all crimes then justice truly would be blind.
