The young Washington Boro woman police arrested Wednesday for committing homicide by vehicle is typical of a growing number of drunken driving arrests in Lancaster County.

She is young. And she is female.

The percentage of arrests for driving under the influence in both categories has increased markedly over the past decade.

While DUI arrests overall have increased 13 percent since 2000, arrests of offenders aged 18-24 have increased 69 percent. Arrests of female offenders have increased 57 percent.

Police charged Sarah Lynn Timblin, 23, with driving under the influence of alcohol when she drove the wrong way on Route 30 and hit a car head-on, killing three York men.

She is in Lancaster County Prison.

Nearly 36 percent of all DUI arrests in Lancaster County in 2006 were of people Timblin's age, 18-24. That's up from 21 percent in 1998.

Arrests of females rose from 14 percent of the total in 1998 to 22 percent in 2006. More than three-quarters of those arrested remain male.

Why are rates for the young and females rising?

Bruce Campbell has directed the Impaired Driver Program, the county agency that processes all DUI cases, for the past 18 years. He has some ideas.

"The rate of drinking and driving might not be going up," he says. "It's just the rate at which they're being caught is going up."

Some police officers might have released young and female drivers to their parents in previous years, he suggests. Now everyone is treated the same.

"We don't care who you are, what gender you are, how old you are," he explains.

And he cites other factors: Young people seem to start drinking at an earlier age these days; and the threshold blood alcohol concentration (BAC) for arrest under 21 years of age was reduced to 0.02 percent in 2004.

While Sarah Timblin fits the profile of local DUI arrests in some ways, she is not typical in others. Her BAC was far higher than most and she is among a relatively small percentage of repeat offenders.

Timblin's BAC was measured at 0.26 percent, more than three times the legal threshold of 0.08 percent.

But the average BAC in DUI arrests has been falling here — from 0.18 to 0.16 percent over the past decade.

Campbell attributes that reduction to three factors: increased prosecution at the lower BAC of 0.08 percent, more sobriety checkpoints and better training for police to spot DUI cases.

Campbell says everyone in his office, which is part of the county's Adult Probation & Parole Services, is "stunned" by Timblin's 0.26 level.

"For most people, it's physically impossible to get to 0.26," he notes.

Police say Timblin is a repeat offender: She was arrested for drunken driving two years ago. But only about a quarter of all DUI arrests here are repeat offenses.

In 2007, only 346 of 1,303 drivers arrested for DUI (27 percent) were repeat offenders. Most had only one previous offense.

"When you look at the entire criminal justice system," Campbell says, "that's a really good recidivism rate, as compared with the thieves and drug addicts."

Campbell says he doesn't know why so few first offenders repeat. He would like to think his court-appointed probation officers, who work to re-educate first-time offenders, have something to do with it.

But he also sees people show up drunk for DUI classes at the Impaired Driver Program office at 40 E. King St. They are sent home in a cab.

"A lot of these guys don't want to go to treatment," Campbell says. "It means changing their lifestyle and they don't know how to live without drinking."

Campbell says the threat of arrest — Lancaster County police are charging twice as many people with DUI as they were two decades ago — is not a major deterrent to chronic drunken drivers because only a fraction are apprehended.

"If the cop isn't there and there's no accident, the guy gets home and there's no indication that he drove drunk," explains Tom Bucher, who supervises Impaired Driver Program probation officers.

Not getting caught suggests to the drunken driver that he can drive safely while drinking, adds Campbell.

Campbell also believes mandated statewide sentencing of DUI cases, which took effect four years ago, has not helped curb repeat offenses. Lancaster County sentencing previous to that change was stiffer than the new guidelines, he says.

Can the law enforcement system do anything to keep someone with a prior drunken driving arrest from drinking and driving again?

"We do everything we can," Campbell says, "but there are times when there's nothing we can do."

As for potential repeat offenders, he notes, "Just because of a hunch or a pattern, we can't do what we would do with our own children" and take their keys.

Ultimately, he says, law enforcement, the court system and the Impaired Driver Program are not responsible for an individual's behavior.

"Repeat offenses could stop with people taking responsibility," Campbell says. "Assuming (Sarah Timblin) was driving drunk, if she doesn't take responsibility, then her family or friends need to take her car keys."

CONTACT US: jbrubaker@LNPnews.com or 291-8781