Reported by the California Department of Motor Vehicles · 2014–2021
1,578 DUI arrests in 2021
−2.8% from 1,623 in 2019, the highest year
Source: California Department of Motor Vehicles, as of Oct 31, 2026. Arrests for driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs (adults and juveniles; felony and misdemeanor), by county, from Table 1 of the Department of Motor Vehicles' annual reports of the California DUI Management Information System (2018, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 32nd reports, three years each). Population: U.S. Census Bureau, county population estimates, Vintage 2025, July 1, 2021 estimate, all residents and residents 18 or older.
- The newest year is 2021. The Department of Motor Vehicles' 32nd annual report (October 2025) is the last to publish arrests by county; no later county table with DUI in it was found (the Department of Justice's open arrests file puts DUI into 'all other' felonies and one misdemeanor total).
- Counts are arrests reported to the Department of Justice by individual agencies, with boat DUI and duplicate cases removed, not people. Some agencies' errors or omissions leave arrests uncounted.
- A county's figure counts the arrests the report assigns to that county, which is not where the person lives. The counts include juveniles (329 of 110,017 statewide in 2021).
- Population is the Census Bureau's estimate for July 1, 2021 (county population estimates, Vintage 2025 series), the newest data year, not a DMV number. The same figure is used for every earlier year, so a rate for an earlier year is only approximate.
- The statewide count to 2024 comes from a second source (the Department of Justice). Read it as the same trend, not as extra years of the county series: the two definitions differ by boat DUI and duplicate cases.
The numbers, year by year
| Year | DUI arrests |
|---|---|
| 2014 | 1,424 |
| 2015 | 1,025 |
| 2016 | 1,255 |
| 2017 | 1,416 |
| 2018 | 1,508 |
| 2019 | 1,623 |
| 2020 | 1,288 |
| 2021 | 1,578 |
Santa Cruz County among every California countyAll California counties by year
Counts are the DUI arrests that law enforcement agencies reported to the California Department of Justice, with boat DUI and duplicate cases removed, as the Department of Motor Vehicles prints them: arrests, not people, and an agency’s errors or omissions leave arrests uncounted. They are not a measure of how much impaired driving there is: enforcement effort shapes them. A county is where the report assigns the arrest, so a county’s count says more about where police make arrests than about who lives there, and no county gets a rate.