Impaired driving risk assessment : a primer for practitioners

Summary: The purpose of this report is to summarize available knowledge about the profile and characteristics of impaired drivers, relevant risk factors, risk assessment instruments and treatment interventions to treat impaired drivers as well as best practices in this field. It provides an overview of available research regarding the profile of male and female first offenders in relation to repeat offenders and highlights the inability of existing theories of behaviour to adequately disentangle the heterogeneous nature of the impaired driving offender population. It also provides a summary of relevant risk factors that have been linked to repeat impaired driving offences, while acknowledging some of the key limitations of the research in this field. In addition, the report briefly reviews some of the available tools used to assess risk, available treatment interventions that are applicable to impaired drivers, the research relating to their effectiveness, and current best practices for the treatment and rehabilitation of impaired driving offenders in remedial driver licensing programs.