Texas DWI Arrests by County

What it shows

Shows the DWI arrests the Texas Department of Public Safety recorded in each county, year by year. The year view shows the state total and the change from year to year, and can set up to two counties beside each other. The county view ranks every county for a year, by count or per 100,000 residents, with each county’s own line beside its bar. Select a county for its figures, its rank and its share of the state. An arrest is counted in the county where it is recorded, not where the person lives, and the Department’s own arrests count in the county where they happened. Where the Department printed no row for a county and a year, the chart leaves a gap instead of drawing a zero.

How to read it

• The line is the state total: every county plus the few arrests the source lists outside any county. The dashed segment and hollow dot mark a preliminary year that may change. Click any year to look at that year in the county view.
• In the county view, bars rank the counties for the chosen year, and the small line beside each bar is that county’s own range over all the years: compare shapes, not heights. Search narrows the list.
• Per 100,000 uses the county’s population. A county with very few residents gets no rate, because a few arrests swing it.
• State agencies’ arrests count in the county where they happened, unlike in the agency chart, where they sit in no county, so a county’s count here can be higher than the charges its local agencies reported.
• Arrest records are not people, and the counts reflect enforcement effort as well as behavior.

Useful on: Texas county and city DWI explainers · Local news on enforcement trends · Highway-safety and prevention reports.