Life Narratives of Incarcerated Repeat Drink-Driving Offenders in Taiwan: A Qualitative Study Based on a Contextually Adapted McGill Illness Narrative Interview

Repeat drink driving remains a road-safety and criminal-justice problem whose recurrence cannot be understood from sanctions alone. This study used a contextually adapted McGill Illness Narrative Interview (MINI) to examine how incarcerated multiple-time drink-driving offenders in Taiwan connected recurrent offending, event-level decisions, responsibility, punishment, identity, and reintegration. Semi-structured narrative interviews were conducted with 15 male prisoners, each apprehended for drink driving at least three times, and analyzed using a theory-informed framework analysis. Because the interviews did not support a consistent reconstruction of onset, temporal analysis focused on the recurrent course of drink driving, apprehension, sanction, continued offending, and reflection. Recurrent episodes often re-emerged within familiar configurations involving alcohol use, mobility, work, family obligations, and situational judgment. Participants retrospectively described drink driving as workable in particular circumstances, and accounts indicated that alcohol could narrow deliberation or sustain subjective control. Contextual explanations, minimization, responsibility acceptance, and positive identity presentation could coexist. Most participants stated an intention to separate drinking from driving, but plans varied and were not treated as verified post-release change. The adapted MINI provides a temporal and contextual scaffold linking recurrent offending, criminal-justice intervention, identity, and reintegration without treating drink driving as a diagnostic construct.