Butler Eagle readers over the past few days have seen more evidence of why it’s time for the Pennsylvania General Assembly to toughen punishment for those who drive while drunk.

Current sentencing guidelines and rehabilitative efforts aren’t having the intended effect of greatly reducing repeat offenses, as the Eagle’s news columns often reveal. Thus, a different strategy is needed.

Drivers from Petrolia, West Sunbury and Valencia provide the latest clear evidence that the current system is not deterring many drunken drivers from repeating their offenses — sometimes multiple times.

The Petrolia man was sentenced to 39 to 114 months in state prison for three charges — his seventh and eighth drunken-driving convictions and a felony drug conviction.

Some people might consider that jail time sufficient — and it might be. But he should have been jailed for significant periods after his third, fourth, fifth and sixth drunken-driving convictions, which might have prevented the need for his seventh and eighth arrests.

The West Sunbury and Valencia men were sentenced to 3 to 6 months in the county prison and five years in the county’s Intermediate Punishment Program, respectively.

The Valencia man will spend just the first month in jail, then 90 days on house arrest with electronic monitoring — hardly a tough sentence.

When it comes to drunken driving, something is wrong in Pennsylvania. However, the legislative will has been lacking to make sentences tougher and much more costly — especially for those with three or more drunken-driving convictions.

Butler County lawmakers should take the lead in pursuing beefed-up punishment that should include, but not be limited to, longer stints of jail time and longer periods of probation and community service.

Law enforcement authorities are permitted to confiscate vehicles involved in drug trafficking. Authorities also should be able to similarly confiscate the vehicle of a person convicted of a third or subsequent drunken-driving offense.

Meager jail time, prosecutors’ concurrence with plea bargains, and weak financial penalties obviously are not reducing drunken-driving recidivism. For many drunken drivers, neither are the rehabilitative resources used to deal with their problem.

Treatment programs are preferable to jail time that’s expensive for taxpayers, when those programs work. But treatment can take place in prison for those who continue to drive and endanger others while impaired by alcohol — or drugs.

State sentencing guidelines currrently limit to 10 years the time frame of drunken-driving offenses that can be factored in for establishing punishment for new convictions. That should change — a driver’s entire drunken-driving history should be weighed when imposing sentencing.

Those who support what amounts to continued leniency for drunken driving should reflect on what their own feelings would be if a family member or friend were killed or injured by a drunken driver.

Locking the cell door and throwing away the key isn’t necessary for most of those apprehended for drunken driving, although some who have suffered tragic losses might disagree.

But drunken-driving sentencing is ineffective in this state, due to the weak penalty limits now permitted by state law.

Lawmakers should face the failure of the current system to curb drunken driving. Expanded penalties, including vehicle confiscation, as well as more determined treatment efforts, are neccesary.