Influencing recidivist drink drivers' entrenched behaviours : the self-reported outcomes of three countermeasures

Concern remains regarding the efficacy of drink driving countermeasures to produce lasting change for repeat offenders, as a wide array of countermeasures have been developed that demonstrate varying levels of success in reducing re-offence rates. This thesis proposes that the collection and examination of repeat offenders' self-reported perceptions, experiences and behavioural changes that result from completing court-ordered interventions can provide valuable contributions to the development of effective sentencing strategies. As a result, the program of research implemented a mixed-method design to investigate the self-reported impact of legal sanctions, a drink driving rehabilitation program, and alcohol ignition interlocks on key outcome measures for a group of recidivist drink drivers.----- Study One incorporated a cross-sectional design to examine the deterrent effect of traditional legal sanctions (e.g., fines and licence disqualification periods), non-legal sanctions, alcohol consumption, recent offending behaviour(s), and the actual severity of sanctions on perceptual deterrence and intentions to re-offend. The study involved face-to-face and telephone interviews with 166 repeat offenders. The analysis indicated that participants perceived legal sanctions to be severe, but not entirely certain nor swift.----- In Study One, self-reported recent drink driving behaviours and alcohol consumption levels were identified as predictors of future intentions to drink and drive. The results suggest that habitual behaviours are difficult to change, and heavy alcohol consumption levels increase the probability of re-offending. At a bivariate level, three non-legal sanctions were negatively associated with intentions to re-offend but were not predictors of future intentions to drink and drive in the model. In addition, a relationship was not evident between: (a) the size of the penalties and perceptions of sanction severity or future intentions to drink and drive, and (b) the number of previous convictions and self-reported deterrence. The findings of the study confirm the popular assumption that some repeat offenders are impervious to the threat and application of legal sanctions.----- Study Two examined the stages of change and self-efficacy levels of 132 repeat offenders - who were all involved in Study One - while they completed an 11 week drink driving rehabilitation program. A repeated measures design was implemented to focus on the impact of the intervention on a number of salient program outcomes such as participants' motivations and self-efficacy levels to control and change their drinking and drink driving behaviour(s). Prior to program commencement, the majority of participants were motivated to change their drinking driving, but not their drinking. The sample also reported high self-efficacy levels to control the two behaviours, but did not have high expectations of the effectiveness of the program.----- Upon completion of the program, significant increases were evident in motivations to change drinking and drink driving behaviours, and a large percentage of participants reported a positive appraisal of the effectiveness of the intervention. Program completion also resulted in a reduction in self-reported alcohol consumption levels, yet the majority of the sample continued to consume harmful levels of alcohol. Self-efficacy levels remained high, although a notable finding was that participants reported higher levels of control over their drinking rather than drink driving behaviours. In general, Study Two provided a positive perspective of the capacity of a drink driving rehabilitation program to produce change for a group of repeat offenders.----- Study Two extended a small body of research and examined the effects that mandated program enrolment has on motivations to change, as well as expectations and appraisals of program effectiveness. Contrary to predictions, mandated participants did not report lower levels of motivation to change drinking and drink driving compared to voluntary attendees, but did indicate lower expectations of the effectiveness of the program, as well as being willing to engage in the program. Furthermore upon program completion, mandated participants also reported lower appraisals of the effectiveness of the program, but this factor was not associated with intentions to re-offend or non-program completion. Rather, not successfully completing the program appeared linked with being unwilling to change drinking behaviours.----- Study Three involved a longitudinal case-study design that utilised both quantitative and qualitative data to conduct one of the first examinations of the impact of alcohol ignition interlocks on a group of recidivist drink drivers from a users' perspective. The study investigated 12 participants' self-reported perceptions and experiences of using an interlock and the effect that the device had on key program outcomes such as drinking levels, operational performance, circumvention attempts and general beliefs regarding the effectiveness of the device in comparison to traditional legal sanctions.----- Participants reported positive appraisals regarding the effectiveness of the device as qualitative themes emerged concerning the educational and practical benefits of interlocks. However, closer examination of individual interlock performances revealed each participant had attempted to start their vehicle after consuming alcohol, and a smaller sample of three drivers were regularly attempting to start their vehicle after drinking. The combination and analysis of self-reported and downloaded interlock data revealed four main themes: (a) initial operational difficulties, (b) a general unwillingness to reduce alcohol consumption levels, (c) an unwillingness to acknowledge/recognise that interlock breath violations resulted from drinking, and (d) an overall decline in the frequency of interlock breath violations over the interlock installation period. Similar to Study Two, a notable finding was that half the sample was still consuming harmful levels of alcohol upon program completion.----- Taken together, the results of the program of research highlight that repeat offenders' entrenched behaviours, such as drinking and drink driving, are resistant to change and that multi-modal interventions are required if the drinking and driving sequence is to be broken for this population. The findings have direct implications for the sentencing and management of repeat offenders and the development of countermeasures that attempt to produce long-term behavioural change

The impact of new oral fluid drug driving detection methods in Queensland: are motorists deterred?

Queensland Police Services have commenced random roadside drug testing of motorists to collectively apprehend as well as deter potential offenders. The present study aimed to examine a sample of Queensland drivers’ (N = 462) level of awareness of the new testing method as well as determine the impact of the countermeasure and other non-legal sanctions on intentions to drug drive. The findings revealed that respondents were generally unaware of the new testing method and a similar proportion remained uncertain regarding the effectiveness of detecting drivers who are driving under the influence of illicit drugs. An examination of the factors associated with intentions to drug drive again in the future revealed that perceptions of apprehension certainty was a significant predictor, as those who reported a lower certainty of apprehension were more likely to report intending to offend. Additionally, self-reported recent drug driving activity and frequent drug consumption were also identified as significant predictors, which indicates that in the current context past behaviour is a prominent predictor of future behaviour. The findings of the study confirm the popular deterrence-based assumption that increasing perceptions of apprehension certainty, such as through random road-side testing, may yet still prove to be an effective method of reducing the burden of drug driving on road safety

Australian forensic psychologists' perspectives on the merits and limits of actuarial instruments in predicting recidivism among violent offenders and sex offenders

Actuarial approaches are regarded as more accurate than both unstructured and structured clinical approaches in assessing risk of recidivism among sex offenders. While there has been a plethora of research on evaluating the effectiveness of actuarial instruments, there has been a paucity of research investigating their actual level of use in forensic settings. In addition, little is known about the practical difficulties associated with administering actuarial instruments. This paper reports on a survey completed by forensic psychologists in Australia about the risk assessment tools they prefer and the benefits and difficulties associated with their use. In addition, the paper explores the extent to which forensic psychologists use clinical information to adjust the level of risk identified through the actuarial approach. The findings are discussed in light of the utility of particular approaches to assessing risk of recidivism among violent offenders and sex offenders

The Impact of Collective Bargaining: Illusion or Reality?

This paper reviews a significant body of evidence regarding the impact of trade unionism on economic performance and seeks to evaluate antithetical views regarding whether estimated differences between union and nonunion workers and firms represent: illusions created by poor experiments, real effects explicable solely in price-theoretic terms, or real effects which reflect the non wage-related dimensions of trade unions. The review yields conclusions on both the substantive questions at hand and the methodologies which have been used to address their validity. With respect to the illusion/reality debate, the preponderance of extant evidence indicates that union effects on a wide variety of economic variables estimated with cross-sectional data are real. Moreover, since the effects of unions on nonwage outcomes generally come from models which hold fixed the level of wages and variables affected by wages, the evidence supports the view that unions do much more than simply raise wages as an economic monopolist. While, in this study, we do not examine interpretations of these nonwage effects, the effects represent an empirical foundation for the "institutional" view of unionism, which is described in Section I. With respect to methods for evaluating the quality of standard cross-sectional experiments, some techniques appear more useful than others. In particular, we find that sensitivity analyses of single-equation results and longitudinal experiments provide valuable checks on cross-sectional findings while multiple-equations approaches produce results which are much too unstable to help resolve the questions of concern.

Work-related road safety risk assessment: utilisation of self-report surveys to predict organisational risk

Work-related driving safety is an emerging concern for Australian and overseas organisations. Research has shown that road crashes are the most common cause of work-related fatalities, injuries and absences from work. This study's objectives were to identify driver characteristics which pose potential risks to work-related driving safety within the organisation, as well as determining the value of such self-reported data to predict crash involvement and general aberrant driving behaviours. This paper reports on a study examining the predictive utility of predominant self-report questionnaires to identify individuals involved in work-related crashes within an Australian organisational fleet setting (N = 4195). Survey questionnaires included the Manchester Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ), Driver Attitude Questionnaire (DAQ), Safety Climate Questionnaire – Modified for Drivers (SCQ-MD) and Risk Taking. The tools were distributed through the company’s internal mail system to employees who volunteered to participate in the study. An important finding to emerge was that a potential fleet "speeding culture" was identified from univariate analyses. For example, drivers were most likely to report engaging in speeding behaviours and also believed that speeding was more acceptable compared to drink driving, following too closely or engaging in risky overtaking manoeuvres. However, multivariate analysis determining factors associated with self-reported crash involvement revealed that increased work pressure and driving errors were predictive of crash risk, even after controlling for exposure on the road. This paper highlights the major findings of the study and discusses the implications and difficulties associated with utilising driver behaviour measurement tools within contemporary organisational fleet settings

The Two Faces of Unionism

Our research demonstrates that the view of unions as organizations whose chief function is to raise wages is seriously misleading. For in addition to raising wages, unions have significant non-wage effects which influence diverse aspects of modern industrial life. By providing workers with a voice both at the workplace and in the political arena, unions can and do affect positively the functioning of the economic and social systems. Although our research on the non-wage effects of trade unions is by no means complete and some results will surely change as more evidence becomes available, enough work has been done to yield the broad outlines of a new view of unionism.

Screening Program on Superalloys for Trisonic Transport. Report No. 2. Results for Cold-Worked N155 Alloy

N155 alloy sheet cold reduced 40 and 65 percent was subjected to a screening program in the as-rolled condition designed to rate materials for possible usefulness for the airframe of a trisonic transport plane, Cold reductions of 40 to 65 percent produced the following properties at room temperature in the as-rolled N155 sheet investigated

Perceptions of Work-Related Road Safety - Safety Versus Savings

In Douglas Adam’s "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy", published in the 1970s, a computer is confronted with the intriguing question: "What is the meaning of life?" After elaborate and tedious number crunching, the computer returns: "The answer to your question is 42". It is obvious, that the monetary valuation of road safety is not an easy task either. In fact, it implies answering an equally difficult and intriguing question – What is the statistical value of a human life? Although various methods and approaches have been put forward to estimate the statistical cost of a road fatality, some scholars argue that valuing fatal injuries and hence human life is virtually impossible. They maintain that people do not nearly have sufficiently accurate preferences to make a sensible trade-off between road safety and money. The (perceptions of) changes in risk levels are so small that making the trade-off is very difficult, if not impossible (Hauer, 1994). However, other road safety costs can be statistically determined and initiatives developed to reduce the burden to both organisations and individuals. Therefore, the topic of this paper is to determine what factors contribute to work-related road incidents and how economic costs to industry organisations could be reduced

Optimisation of a high-efficiency solar-driven organic rankine cycle for applications in the built environment

Energy security, pollution and sustainability are major challenges presently facing the international community, in response to which increasing quantities of renewable energy are to be generated in the urban environment. Consequently, recent years have seen a strong increase in the uptake of solar technologies in the building sector. In this work, the potential of a solar combined heat and power (CHP) system based on an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) engine is investigated in a domestic setting. Unlike previous studies that focus on the optimisation of the ORC subsystem, this study performs a complete system optimisation considering both the design parameters of the solar collector array and the ORC engine simultaneously. Firstly, we present thermodynamic models of different collectors, including flat-plate and evacuated-tube designs, coupled to a non-recuperative sub-critical ORC architecture that delivers power and hot water by using thermal energy rejected from the engine. Optimisation of the complete system is first conducted, aimed at identifying operating conditions for which the power output is maximised. Then, hourly dynamic simulations of the optimised system configurations are performed to complete the system sizing. Results are presented of: (i) dynamic 3-D simulations of the solar collectors together with a thermal energy storage tank, and (ii) of an optimisation analysis to identify the most suitable working fluids for the ORC engine, in which the configuration and operational constraints of the collector array are considered. The best performing working fluids (R245fa and R1233zd) are then chosen for a whole-system annual simulation in a southern European climate. The system configuration combining an evacuated-tube collector array and an ORC engine is found to be best-suited for electricity prioritisation, delivering an electrical output of 3,605¿kWh/year from a 60¿m2 collector array. In addition, the system supplies 13,175¿kWh/year in the form of domestic hot water, which is equivalent to more than 6 times the average annual household demand. A brief cost analysis and comparison with photovoltaic (PV) systems is also performed, where despite the lower PV investment cost per kWel, the levelised energy costs of the different systems are found to be similar if the economic value of the thermal output is taken into account. Finally, a discussion of the modelled solar-CHP systems results shows how these could be used for real applications and extended to other locationsPeer ReviewedPostprint (updated version