A man clad in a yellow jumpsuit and green handcuffs asked Denver County Court Judge Mary Celeste to reschedule his arraignment Tuesday afternoon in courtroom 3C.

It was a small start for a new sobriety court that backers and drunken-driving victims hope will be a big step toward cutting the number of repeat DUI offenders on city streets.

Instead of as much as six months in jail, some persistent drunken drivers could opt into an 18- to 24-month court program that focuses on addiction treatment, frequent interactions with a judge and regular blood-alcohol monitoring.

Tuesday’s docket was tiny, but it won’t stay that way for long. When the $580,000, mostly grant-funded program grows to capacity, organizers expect about 300 participants at any one time.

Celeste is one of several in Denver’s legal community who helped put the program together in the past year.

“When I worked in arraignment court, I noticed it was like a revolving door. I felt like it was time for a change,” she said.

Denver’s program cherry-picks features of several DUI courts across the country:

• Offenders start treatment while serving mandatory jail sentences and then transition into treatment in the community.

• The court has buy-in from public defenders and district attorneys, thanks to funding from the Crime Prevention and Control Commission.

• Offenders will start their interactions with the special court within a week of arrest in ideal circumstances.

Denver police in 2010 arrested 3,276 people suspected of drunken driving, about 1,200 fewer than in 2008.

A Denver Post analysis showed that, from 2005 to 2007, about one-third of the DUI arrests in Colorado involved a repeat offender.

One was Sandra Lee Jacobson, who downed a “road pop” on Peña Boulevard and killed two visiting librarians on their way to the airport in January 2009.

Jacobson had a long record of citations and a prior DUI with a blood-alcohol content nearly three times the intoxication point, and she had ignored previous treatment requirements, records showed.

James Krasniewicz’s wife, Kathy, died in that accident. He’s not sure whether the DUI court would have helped to save Kathy, but he thinks the treatment court is a good idea.

“They need to try something. I don’t know if it’s going to work for everyone,” Krasniewicz said. “It might save someone’s life one day.”

Chief Deputy District Attorney Matt Wenig thinks focusing efforts on the most persistent drunken drivers — those on their third offense or those with a very high blood-alcohol content — is the best way to cut DUI numbers and prevent deaths or serious injuries.

“A lot of the first-timers made a mistake, and we never see them again,” Wenig said. “We try to play the odds. If we get the repeats off the road, maybe we’re all a little safer.”

Jessica Fender: 303-954-1244 or jfender@denverpost.com