The Underground Conservative

This is pretty embarrassing for the legal system in Wisconsin.

A River Falls man had to be arrested and convicted of drunk driving 15 times before being sent to prison.

15 times.

More than 475,000 people in Wisconsin have at least one drunken-driving conviction on their record. Nearly 8,000 have five or more. Just one has 15: Mark Allen Warner of River Falls.

All of them occurred before his 40th birthday.

Throughout the 1990s, Warner’s drinking resulted in divorce, a felony record and several crashes. From 1992 to 2000, Warner was pulled over as often as every couple of months and was well-known to police. Yet he avoided significant jail time and treatment for almost a decade – a fact the judge involved in his final case called a failure of the criminal justice system.

Since last month’s publication of a Journal Sentinel series, “Wasted in Wisconsin,” legislators, members of law enforcement and advocacy groups have called for tougher penalties for repeat drunken drivers. Warner and other multiple offenders say it was a combination of incarceration and treatment that finally got them to change their ways.

Warner wasn’t sentenced to prison until he had been convicted of drunken driving 15 times.

His blood-alcohol level averaged 0.212 – almost three times the legal limit – for the 11 offenses in which his blood or breath test information was available. He repeatedly drove after his license had been revoked, garnering at least 10 arrests for that. And two of his drunken driving arrests followed domestic arguments.

Another stunning fact is the state has 8,000 people with at least five convictions. More proof that we aren’t really serious here in Wisconsin about dealing with drunk driving. It has nothing to do with the supposed culture of drinking, as if there are some potential Carrie Nations out there who want to turn us to into a state full of teetotalers.

This is a criminal justice problem, not a problem with drinking. We’ve sent the message over and over again that we really don’t think these criminals belong in prison, continue to give them slap on the wrist after slap on the wrist and wonder why we have criminals piling up drunk driving conviction after drunk driving conviction.

None of the traditional methods work. Suspending drivers’ licenses. Revoking drivers’ licenses. Impounding cars wouldn’t work, either. They’d just find someone else’s car to borrow. A spouse, a friend, a family member, whatever.

The only way to isolate these potential killers from society is to make them guests of the Crowbar Hotel a lot sooner than after the 15th conviction.

That’s why feel-good proposals as we discussed here won’t make much of a dent in solving the problem.

We can talk about getting tough on drunk driving but until we actually do something, that’s all it is. Just talk. Politicians and community organizers posing for holy pictures and the Drive By Media fawning over how much they care.

But it’s pure symbolism over substance.

We seem to want to talk the talk, but we aren’t willing to walk the walk.