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Albuquerque Journal, October 24, 2001

MADD Victim-Impact Panels Ineffective, Study Says
By Richard Benke, The Associated Press

A study by New Mexico researchers finds that victim impact panels held by Mothers Against Drunk Driving appear not to reduce DWI reoffense rates among men and may be tied to higher rates among women.

MADD officials say they want to discuss the study with the researchers with an eye toward possibly improving their program.

Lead researcher Janet C'de Baca said Wednesday her study isn't the first to find increased recidivism among women drinkers.

"Female repeat offenders (who attended VIPs) were significantly at higher risk for having another DWI compared with women who had not gone to the victim impact panel," said C'de Baca, a Ph.D.

Fellow researchers were Sandra Lapham, M.D., Albuquerque-based director of the sponsoring Behavioral Health Research Center of the Southwest; doctoral candidate Hwa Chi Liang and Betty Skipper, Ph.D., professor of family and community medicine at the University of New Mexico.

Asked why women would reoffend more frequently than men, C'de Baca said: "Already in our society it's less acceptable for women to have problems with alcohol than for men. If this is your second or third DWI, it's possibly harder for women" to face this problem.

"We speculate that for some offenders, VIP participation may worsen feelings of guilt and shame," she says.

The study says: "There is evidence that confrontational approaches are ineffective in the treatment of alcohol problems."

In victim impact panels, victims and survivors tell of their damage, loss and pain resulting from DWI offenses, while offenders listen. The panels do not match offenders with victims of the same incident.

"It's easy to see how they might be characterized as 'shaming and blaming,' but that is definitely not our goal," Terry Huertaz, MADD executive director for New Mexico, says in a summary released with the study, published in the current issue of The Journal of Studies on Alcohol. It looked at 6,702 people arrested for DWI in Bernalillo County from 1989 to 1994.

It compared rearrest rates among people who went to VIPs with those who didn't.

"Female repeat offenders referred to VIPs had an odds of rearrest more than twice that of females not referred," the summary says.

It shows those female VIP participants had about a 70 percent likelihood of reoffense compared with 35 percent among non-VIP offenders in 1989-91, and 40 percent compared with 20 percent for 1992-94, according to Garnett McMillan, a statistician working with the study team.

Huertaz said: "I don't want to discount this study... I'd like to sit down with the scientists that did the research and have some dialogue and see what her research is showing we can do to improve our program."

Evaluation forms filled out by participants have shown 80 percent felt a positive impact from the program, she said.

Judges often refer DWI offenders to VIPs thinking they help reduce repeat offenses.

But Stephanie Frogge, national director of victim services for MADD in Dallas, says the VIPs were never intended for hard-core drinkers, and the group will continue efforts to educate courts about better screening candidates for the program.

"We're very clear that a (victim impact) panel is most likely going to impact a first-time offender," she said.

She also said the study's most recent data were collected in 1994, and VIPs have changed significantly since then.

In the same journal, a 1991 study written by Elisabeth Wells-Parker of Mississippi State University found that female DWI offenders who underwent a Life Activities Inventory-Current Status Questionnaire, focusing on their problems, found similar differences in recidivism — 24 percent who didn't participate and didn't repeat vs. 44.4 percent who did both.

Wells-Parker suggested "repeated examination of their current life situation possibly exacerbates a sense of distress, helplessness and hopelessness which could, in turn, lead to increased escape drinking and higher recidivism rates."

Earlier studies had suggested, she said, "that women, especially heavy-drinking women, drink for escapism and psychological comfort even more than do comparable men."

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