Communication Failures Provide DUI Offenders With Loopholes

Recently, the Associated Press reported a story which detailed a Texas man's release from jail who was arrested for first offense driving under the influence in Nebraska. The man was released after being allowed to pay ten percent of the $2,000 bond posted, without ever facing a judge. This arrangement was based on the criminal justice department's belief that the man, Robert Hood, was under arrest for his first DUI offense. However, this was not the man's first DUI arrest, or even his second or third. This was Robert Hood's fourth driving under the influence arrest in three states over the last two weeks.

According to authorities, the FBI-run computer system which catalogues all driving under the influence arrests only provides information on individuals who were fingerprinted upon being taken to prison and commonly, information from recent arrests is delayed getting into the system, as was the case with Hood. Sarpy County Judge Todd Hutton, who sits on the bench in suburban Omaha stated, "If judges are made aware of other pending charges, it could justify a higher bond to [ensure] the person appears in court. The judges make their decisions based on the information they are provided. They can't act on information that is not brought to their attention." At the time of his fourth DUI arrest in Nebraska, the system did not display Hood's three previous DUI arrests, one in Wyoming and two in South Dakota.

This issue of incomplete information is not isolated to incidents where the DUI arrests occurred in more than one state. Cases have been reported where officials were unaware of pending driving under the influence cases within their own state borders. According to Warren County Sheriff Martin pace, "In Mississippi we enter everything into the system, misdemeanors and felonies both. Not all states do that; some jurisdictions don't enter misdemeanors. If somebody gets a DUI conviction in New Jersey and then another in Tennessee and then gets one here, we may not ever know about their prior convictions. If they're not entered into the system then we'll never know."

In response to the numerous flaws of the current computer database, the FBI is planning to launch a new pilot program that would alert authorities when a defendant has multiple DUI charges pending, both in state and out of state. The National Data Exchange, or N-DEx for short, is designed to link all local, state, and federal records in one database for easy access. N-DEx takes 360 different data elements found on arrest reports and catalogues the information so that each element can be searched, linked, analyzed, and shared nationwide.

The FBI's goal is to incorporate all of the state's information into N-DEx by 2010. The potential drawback to this plan is the fact that the submission of data to N-DEx is completely voluntary, which could delay the collection of data significantly. However, the FBI is convinced that the N-DEx pilot program will be highly effective at cutting back the number of individuals who are allowed to slip through the cracks of the criminal justice system.

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