BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Repeat DWI offenders in Louisiana could face up to 30 years in prison under a new law aimed at drivers who have already caused serious injury or death and then chose to drive impaired again.
The law, which goes into effect in August, increases prison time and fines for repeat offenders.
“You’re playing Russian roulette on the road with other people’s lives when you decide to make that choice to get behind the wheel impaired,” said Sunny Wall with the Louisiana chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
DWI cases in Louisiana
In 2024, East Baton Rouge Parish saw 992 cases of driving while impaired, the second highest amount in the state, according to traffic records from LSU’s Center for Analytics & Research in Transportation Safety (CARTS) within the E. J. Ourso College of Business.
Jefferson Parish led the state with over a thousand DWI cases in that same year.
“When we think about impaired driving, we think about some years, over 300 deaths in Louisiana are caused by it. And I think people in general are sick of that,” said Greory Fischer with the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission.
Norma Dubois, parish court unit chief with the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office, wrote the origins of the bill for lawmakers.
“Most people, if they’ve already hurt someone or killed someone, would probably never drive impaired again. But these offenders have chosen to do it again. So, the penalties are stronger, harsher for those offenders,” Dubois said.
Penalties under the new law
Under the new law, a driver’s second DWI would carry a $2,000 fine and at least two years in prison without benefits.
A fourth DWI could mean at least 12 years behind bars and up to $5,000 in fines.
In the most extreme cases, a fourth-offense DWI could carry up to 30 years in prison.
“We have so much recidivism out there, and when you are on the roads and someone is harmed or killed, people have lost a loved one due to impaired driving, if there are people out there that are going to do it again, there needs to be a harsher penalty to make the message more clear,” Wall said.
Wall and Dubois are part of the governor’s impaired driving task force, which meets to discuss ways to eliminate impaired driving cases.
“We just want to see numbers go down. We want to save lives,” Fischer said.
