Counted by the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice · 2019–2023
50 DUI case filings in 2023
−38.3% from 81 in 2022, the highest year
Source: Colorado Department of Public Safety, Division of Criminal Justice, Office of Research and Statistics, as of Oct 31, 2026. DUI case filings in all 64 Colorado counties, 2019 to 2023, from Appendix B (counties) of the Division of Criminal Justice’s report “Driving Under the Influence of Drugs and Alcohol: Calendar Year 2023 Report (June 2026)”. Its 22 judicial districts (Appendix D) add up to the report’s statewide totals (Table 2) in every year, and the counties add up to the districts apart from the counts under five the report withholds.
- Case filings, not arrests. The Division counts a case in the state courts or Denver County Court that has at least one DUI or DWAI charge, with duplicate cases removed (cases filed twice in error, misdemeanors re-filed as felonies, duplicate tickets, consolidated cases). A DUI arrest that never becomes a court case is not counted, and a case counts once whatever it ended as.
- A county is the county the report assigns the filing to, not where the person lives. The report prints all 64 counties for every year here.
- Counts under five are withheld in the report and are empty here, not zero: Cheyenne 2019, Hinsdale 2019 and 2020, San Juan 2023, Sedgwick 2022. Because of them the counties can add up to a little less than the statewide total. The site does not work the withheld counts out from the totals.
- The newest year is 2023: the Division published its report for it in June 2026. Say the year next to every number.
- The Colorado Judicial Branch’s own annual report counts something narrower, by state fiscal year (July to June): DUI and DWAI filings of the county court class, 15,227 for fiscal year 2023 against the Division’s 20,878 for calendar year 2023. The two are different series and are not mixed here.
- The Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s crime statistics portal prints a different count again, DUI cases reported by law enforcement agencies (16,294 in 2024). It counts reports, not court filings, and says the current year is not comparable with earlier years. It is not used here.
- Populations are the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2023 estimates (Vintage 2025), one figure for every year. No county gets a rate.
The numbers, year by year
| Year | DUI case filings |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 51 |
| 2020 | 39 |
| 2021 | 74 |
| 2022 | 81 |
| 2023 | 50 |
San Miguel County among every Colorado countyAll Colorado counties by year
Counts are DUI case filings: cases in Colorado’s state courts or Denver County Court with at least one DUI or DWAI charge, duplicate cases removed, as the Division of Criminal Justice counts them. A DUI arrest that never becomes a court case is not counted, a case counts once whatever it ended as, and a case is not a person. They are not a measure of how much impaired driving there is: enforcement and prosecution decisions shape them. A county is where the report assigns the filing, so a county’s count says more about where cases are filed than about who lives there, and no county gets a rate.