Policing and Punishing the Drinking Driver is at one level about the
impact of specific drinking-driving countermeasures (punishments imposed
by courts on convicted offenders and random breath testing) in a
particular place (New South Wales, Australia) in two particular years
(1972 and 1983). At another level, however, the research reported herein
is concerned with general questions of deterrence, and with the impact
of the criminal justice system on the perception and behavior of a broad
cross-section of the population. In contrast to much of the research in
the drink-drive field, the research questions concentrate on the
psychological and sociological processes whereby behavior is altered in
the short-term as the result of a massive legal intervention or as the
result of the routine imposition of legal punishments.