Jail on the Installment Plan

By Sarah Sturmon Dale

A rural Minnesota judge, tired of seeing the same people come before him repeatedly for drunken driving, is trying something new. Isanti County District Judge James Dehn sentences some repeat drunken drivers to staggered jail terms--allowing them to serve one-third of their time immediately, one-third a year later and one-third a year after that. In between those jail stints, if the offenders can prove they have reformed, they can earn their way out of the remaining jail time. But if they get another DUI infraction, it's back to jail for the full sentence.

Dehn, 52, says he has had phenomenal results. "Of about 60 people I have sentenced like this, there are only three who have gotten a new DUI over the past four years," he says. "We are empowering the drunk driver like no one else has done before to change his life." The success has led Dehn to consider extending the program to other crimes, such as domestic violence and drug abuse. As many as 15 other judges in Minnesota are trying staggered sentencing, in part because of the annual classes on sentencing alternatives that Dehn teaches for new judges.

Some prosecutors, however, question the long-term effectiveness of the staggered sentence and express concern about its fairness, since the sentence is given to only some offenders. The experiment has generated so much attention that the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission plans to weigh in on the debate with a study due to be released this summer. "If it works as well as he says it does, everybody should be doing it," says Scott Swanson, executive director of the commission. "If not, we should be able to tell." --By Sarah Sturmon Dale