Program Profile: North Dakota’s 24/7 Sobriety Program

This program seeks to reduce the rearrests of individuals previously convicted of driving while under the influence (DUI) of alcohol or drugs through intensive testing and monitoring of drug and alcohol consumption. The program is rated Promising. There was a statistically significant decrease in the rates of DUI arrests by roughly 9 percent in counties that implemented the program, compared with counties that did not implement the program.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes either 1) one study conducted in multiple sites; or 2) two or three studies, each conducted at a different site. Learn about how we make the multisite determination.

Program Goals

The 24/7 Sobriety Program was originally launched in South Dakota to reduce incarceration in state prisons, by requiring participants to abstain from alcohol as a condition of bond for repeat arrests of driving while under the influence (DUI) of alcohol or other drugs and to submit breathalyzer tests twice a day at the county jail. North Dakota’s 24/7 Sobriety Program (which is modeled after the South Dakota program) is designed to reduce the alcohol and drug use of individuals under community supervision for substance-involved offenses. The main goal is to encourage an individual’s sobriety 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These individuals can avoid incarceration as long as they abstain from alcohol and drug use. Swift and certain sanctions are used for those individuals who test positive for substance use.

Target Population

The program initially targeted persons repeatedly convicted of DUI offenses but was later expanded to include participants with court-ordered conditions of bond, with pretrial release, or as a condition of sentence or probation for any violation in which drugs or alcohol may be involved, and for cases involving domestic abuse or involving abuse/neglect of a child.

Program Components

North Dakota’s program has been in operation since January 2008. As of 2013, North Dakota legislation has mandated that any individual arrested for DUI would lose their license and be required to enter the 24/7 Sobriety Program to regain their license. Length of participation in the program depended on the charging offense. Individuals convicted of their first DUI offense are mandated to the program for 6 months; individuals convicted of repeat DUI offenses are mandated to the program for 1 year; individuals arrested with Blood Alcohol Level (BAC) over 0.18 or with two or more prior DUI arrests are mandated to the program for 2 years; and individuals with two or more prior DUI arrests and a BAC of over 0.18 are mandated for 3 years. In addition, participants are required to cover the costs of their tests and monitoring devices.

North Dakota’s 24/7 Sobriety Program requires participants to abstain from alcohol or illegal drug use as a condition of an individual’s pretrial bond or probation. Participants are required either to 1) submit breathalyzer tests at the county jail every morning and evening; 2) wear a continuous alcohol monitoring (CAM) bracelet that tests sweat every 30 minutes for alcohol; or 3) submit to urinalysis or drug patch testing for illegal drugs.

Breathalyzer tests are done at 12-hour intervals (once in the morning and once in the evening). The CAM ankle bracelets (called Secure Continuous Alcohol Remote Monitor, or SCRAM, bracelets) allow for continuous monitoring of alcohol consumption by law enforcement with daily remote electronic reporting. Participants may also be required to wear drug patches to monitor drug use (patches are worn for 7–10 days and then mailed in) or provide random urine samples twice a week. Program participants may be placed on one or more types of tests at the same time. Testing positive for alcohol or illegal drugs, missing a test, or tampering with a monitoring device is met with an immediate 1- to 2-night stay in county jail.

Program Theory

Incentive-based models of theory would suggest that the perceived threat of incarceration (measured by certainty, celerity, and severity) would induce greater compliance with the conditions of community supervision (Becker 1968). North Dakota’s 24/7 Sobriety Program prioritizes certainty and celerity over severity to deter alcohol and substance use and related crime (Midgette et al. 2021).

Additional Information

Although the program was based on South Dakota’s 24/7 Sobriety Project, North Dakota’s program is different in several ways. For one, North Dakota allows up to the equivalent of a 0.02 BAC on a breathalyzer test as opposed to South Dakota’s project in which any trace of alcohol was a violation. For another, monitoring using a CAM bracelet is more common in North Dakota than in South Dakota. Finally, drug testing is more commonplace in North Dakota than in South Dakota.

More information on South Dakota’s 24/7 Sobriety Project can be found at https://crimesolutions.ojp.gov/ratedprograms/404.

Study

Midgette and colleagues (2021) assessed the effects of North Dakota’s 24/7 Sobriety Program on substance-impaired driving arrests, by comparing changes in outcomes between 2004 and 2015 for counties that implemented the program (the treatment group) with counties that did not implement the program (the comparison group). Participant and program information was collected through data provided by the North Dakota Attorney General for all enrollees through December 2015. Data included the dates of program initiation, program termination, and all scheduled tests and results. All participants listed as active as of the data-censoring date were assumed to be participating as of the end of 2015—the end of the study period. The 24/7 Sobriety Program for each county was counted as operational once the number of county participants in the program for a given month equaled or exceeded a threshold share of the average number of driving under the influence of alcohol or other drugs (DUI) arrests in the county over the previous year. Administrative data provided by the state of North Dakota did not include identifying characteristics, so repeat enrollment under multiple participant identification numbers cannot be determined.

By the end of 2015, 44 of the state’s 53 counties had operational programs based on the 25 percent threshold, and individuals had been assigned to participate in the program more than 13,000 times. The remaining nine counties did not offer the program. These nine comparison counties conducted business as usual which consisted of traditional community supervision. Under traditional community supervision an individual may receive several different orders (e.g., meet regularly with a probation officer, attend 12-step meetings, abstain, and participate in alcohol or other drug testing, avoid environments such as bars, and limit use of vehicles [Midgette et al. 2021]). Participant outcome information reported by the North Dakota Attorney General was collected for 13,496 participants. Participants were predominately male (75.9 percent), and three fourths were between 21 and 45 years old, with a median age of 31. Fifty-eight percent of participants were enrolled in the program for a DUI offense, about one fourth (24.6 percent) for a drug or paraphernalia possession arrest, 9 percent for a domestic violence or assault arrest, and about 8 percent for other offenses not specified. Simultaneous and not mutually exclusive testing methods for participants’ use of alcohol included body-worn continuous alcohol monitoring (CAM) devices (61.6 percent), breathalyzer (30.5 percent), and drug patch and urinalysis (27.8 percent). Participants were monitored for alcohol for just over 1.1 million participant-days between 2008 and 2015.

Program evaluators estimated difference-in-differences models to identify the effect of program availability on county-level DUI arrests. Relying on variation across counties in the timing of program implementation in North Dakota as a natural experiment, researchers used difference-in-differences fixed-effects Poisson regressions to measure the program’s effect on county-level arrests for substance-impaired driving. The primary outcome variable was the count of DUI arrests reported to the North Dakota Department of Transportation between 2004 and 2015. Data for calendar year 2007 were not available for this analysis, therefore authors interpolated the missing values using a Poisson-based multiple imputation. Participant compliance with orders to abstain from alcohol and other drug use was examined by using breathalyzer, CAM devices, transdermal drug patches, and urinalyses.

Results were calculated as estimated incident rate ratios. The evaluators estimated the main models using panel fixed-effects Poisson regression to provide consistent estimates of the conditional mean function across a wide range of potential data-generating processes. The evaluators generated alternative standard errors by clustering at North Dakota’s eight judicial districts. Standard errors were reported separately based on a permutation test to assess whether the effects reported are due to the 24/7 Sobriety Program implementation rather than chance. Indicator variables were controlled for in the analysis, including an indicator for whether college was in session (North Dakota State University and the University of North Dakota) and an indicator of Bakken oil field employment expansion to account for the influx of primarily young males to relatively high-paying, high-stress oil industry jobs in the five counties making up the Bakken Formation in the state’s northwest corner during the oil boom over January 2009 to April 2015 (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis 2019).

For more information about the 24/7 Sobriety Project, please see North Dakota’s Office of the Attorney General’s program website: https://attorneygeneral.nd.gov/public-safety/247-sobriety-program.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile: