Investment Fraud Newsroom

Ayuda Program Evaluation Shows Positive Results With Youth Dwi

Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) continues to be a very serious problem in New Mexico.  While efforts to curb adult DWI have met with mixed results, no one has found a way to address adolescent DWI through existing intervention and treatment programs, until now.

The Assisting Youth Using Drugs and Alcohol (AYUDA) program, in place at the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center for the past six years and under the direction of Rick Miera, is demonstrating remarkable success."  The program offers significant intervention and treatment services to a variety of adolescents in the juvenile justice system.

A recent evaluation of the program and the essential DWI component, known as the AYUDA Screening and Tracking Program specifically designed for DWI adolescent offenders, indicates that 99% of program participants who successfully completed the program never received a second DWI offense as a juvenile and 87% of the same participants reaching adulthood have not received a second DWI.

"The components of this program include early intervention, mandatory referral from the court and probation officers and entry at any time into a core curriculum program,” says Commissioner Tim Cummins. “The evaluation results show tremendous potential for this program to become a replicate used throughout the state.”