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District of Columbia DUI costs: the $1,000 first-offence fine, priced component by component
The District of Columbia is the one jurisdiction our fifty state breakdowns do not cover, and its scheme is genuinely different: three separate offences — DUI, DWI and the lesser OWI — priced in D.C. Code sections 50-2206.11 through 50-2206.15, with mandatory jail minimums that rise with the reading itself. This page prices the District's components from the Code and the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles only. Like every page on this site it prices components, never a single District-wide total, and it quotes no insurance figure of any kind.
Three offences, three different price tags
Section 50-2206.11 makes it unlawful to drive or operate a vehicle, or to be in actual physical control of one, while under the influence of alcohol or a drug — that is the District's DUI offence, and it does not require any particular alcohol concentration. Section 50-2206.12 states the per se offence, DWI: driving with an alcohol concentration of 0.08 grams or more per 100 millilitres of blood or per 210 litres of breath, or the urine equivalents the section lists. Section 50-2206.14 covers driving by a person under 21 with any measurable alcohol, and section 50-2206.15 creates the lesser offence of operating while impaired — OWI — which requires proof that the driver's ability was impaired but carries a lower maximum. The charging label matters financially before anything else is priced, because the Code prices DUI and DWI together in section 50-2206.13 and prices OWI separately, and more cheaply, in section 50-2206.15.
A first DUI or DWI: a $1,000 fine and up to 180 days
Section 50-2206.13(a) sets the first-offence penalty for a violation of section 50-2206.11 or 50-2206.12: a fine of $1,000, incarceration for not more than 180 days, or both. There is no sliding fine range on a clean first offence — the fine figure in the statute is a flat $1,000 — but the same subsection builds in mandatory-minimum jail terms keyed to the test result and the substance involved. A ten-day mandatory minimum applies if the alcohol concentration was at least 0.20 grams per 100 millilitres of blood or 210 litres of breath, or at least 0.25 grams per 100 millilitres of urine. A fifteen-day mandatory minimum applies above 0.25 grams in blood or breath, or 0.32 grams in urine. A twenty-day mandatory minimum applies above 0.30 grams in blood or breath, or 0.39 grams in urine. A fifteen-day mandatory minimum also applies where the driver's blood or urine contains a Schedule I chemical or controlled substance, phencyclidine, cocaine, methadone, morphine or an active metabolite or analog listed in the subsection. Each of those minimums is time, not money — this page does not convert jail days into dollars, and no District schedule publishes a per-day jail charge for sentenced DUI time that we could cite instead.
| DUI component (District of Columbia) | Published amount |
|---|---|
| First-offence DUI/DWI fine (D.C. Code § 50-2206.13(a)) | $1,000, with incarceration of not more than 180 days, or both |
| Second-offence DUI/DWI fine (§ 50-2206.13(b)) | Not less than $2,500 and not more than $5,000, incarceration not more than 1 year, 10-day mandatory minimum |
| Third-offence DUI/DWI fine (§ 50-2206.13(c)) | Not less than $2,500 and not more than $10,000, incarceration not more than 1 year, 15-day mandatory minimum |
| First-offence OWI fine (§ 50-2206.15) | $300, incarceration not more than 90 days |
| Minor in the vehicle, additional fine (§ 50-2206.13) | Additional $500 to $1,000 for each minor present in the vehicle |
| D.C. DMV licence action on a first conviction | Revocation for 6 months; 1 year on a second conviction and 2 years on a third, per the DMV's published revocation periods — no reinstatement dollar figure is quoted from any unofficial source |
Repeat offences inside the fifteen-year window
Section 50-2206.13(b) prices the second offence — a violation when the driver has one prior offence under sections 50-2206.11, 50-2206.12 or 50-2206.14 — at a fine of not less than $2,500 and not more than $5,000, incarceration for not more than one year, or both, with a ten-day mandatory-minimum term before the high-reading and drug minimums in the subsection are layered on top. A third offence, under subsection (c) read with the sentencing summaries the District publishes, carries a fine of not less than $2,500 and not more than $10,000, up to one year of incarceration, and a fifteen-day mandatory minimum. The prior-offence window the Code works with is fifteen years, which is why our lookback period guide lists the District among the longest windows in the country. Priors from other states can count as well — the mechanism is the same one priced on our out-of-state prior page — and a driver sentenced in the District on the strength of an old conviction elsewhere pays District figures, not the figures of the state where the prior occurred.
The two add-ons drivers miss: children in the car and the DMV case
The Code adds a separate fine where a minor is in the vehicle: an additional $500 to $1,000 for each minor present, on top of the fine for the underlying offence. That per-child structure mirrors the enhancement logic in our child passenger guide, but the District's figure is its own and is quoted here from section 50-2206.13 rather than borrowed from any state's schedule. Separately, the criminal case is only half the proceeding. The D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles runs its own revocation case on the licence, and its published revocation periods for DUI convictions run six months on a first conviction, one year on a second and two years on a third. The District also operates an ignition interlock programme through the DMV, under which a revoked driver may be able to drive a vehicle equipped with a device during the revocation period. The DMV publishes the programme's eligibility rules; it does not publish the device lease price, which is charged by private vendors, so no interlock dollar figure appears on this page — the same treatment our interlock guide gives vendor pricing everywhere. Court filing and transcript charges in D.C. Superior Court follow that court's own fee schedule and are case-specific; they are described here, not priced.
What the District charges for the lesser OWI
OWI under section 50-2206.15 is the outcome many District DUI arrests are negotiated down to, and its first-offence price is materially lower: a fine of $300 and incarceration of not more than 90 days. That makes the District's version of the reduced charge closer in structure to the wet reckless outcome in states that offer one — a genuinely cheaper offence on the fine line, not merely a relabelled DUI — while still being a criminal impaired-driving conviction with its own escalating penalties for repeat OWI offences and its own licence consequences at the DMV. A driver comparing a plea offer in the District should price it against the $1,000 first-offence DUI/DWI fine and the mandatory-minimum structure above, because the gap between the two labels — $700 on the fine line alone, before the jail-minimum difference — is the real monetary content of the negotiation.
Sources: D.C. Code §§ 50-2206.11, 50-2206.12, 50-2206.13, 50-2206.14, 50-2206.15; District of Columbia Department of Motor Vehicles, revocation periods and ignition interlock programme pages. Last verified: November 2026.
The fine is one line in a longer stack — court costs, program fees, interlock, supervision and reinstatement all bill separately. Price the layers that apply to your case in the calculator.
Open the DUI cost calculatorHow this page fits the rest of the map
With this breakdown the site now prices every United States jurisdiction's first-offence fine structure: the fifty state pages collected on our states index and this District page. The District's flat $1,000 first-offence fine sits at the simple end of the national pattern — most states state a range and let the court pick within it — while its BAC-keyed mandatory minimums are among the most finely graduated anywhere, with three separate reading thresholds in a single subsection. Drivers whose District case grows out of an arrest on federal property inside the city should also read our federal land page, because a case charged under the Assimilative Crimes Act or the federal park and property regulations is priced in a different frame from the D.C. Code figures above, and the two systems meet constantly in a city full of federal enclaves.
Related cost guides: DUI lookback period costs, DUI with a child passenger costs, Out-of-state prior DUI costs, Wet reckless costs, DUI on federal land costs.
Sources: D.C. Code §§ 50-2206.11–50-2206.15; D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles. Last verified: November 2026. This page is educational information about costs only — not legal advice. Laws and fees change; confirm current figures with your court and your state's driver-licensing agency.