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What shall we do with the Drunkenness Offender?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Howard I. Hershon ,
Tim Cook  and
Peter A. Foldes
Howard I. Hershon
Affiliation:
Addiction Research Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, University of London and the Maudsley Hospital; Shenley Hospital, nr. St. Albans, Herts
Tim Cook
Affiliation:
Alcoholics Recovery Project, 25 Camberwell Grove, London, S.E.5
Peter A. Foldes
Affiliation:
Alcoholics Recovery Project, 25 Camberwell Grove, London, S.E.5
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Extract

In England, public intoxication has been a criminal offence ever since an Act of Parliament was passed in the reign of James I, somewhat over three and a half centuries ago. Edwards (1970) compiled some figures on these offences for the last two hundred years, showing that the rate of arrest was much higher in the nineteenth century than at present. For example, in 1878 there were 70 arrests per 10,000 of the population, compared with a comparable figure for 1968 of 16. Nevertheless, the latest available figures from the Home Office (1971) show that 82,961 persons were found guilty of simple or aggravated public drunkenness in 1971. In the U.S.A., with its apparently much larger alcoholism problem, there were nearly one and a half million arrests for this group of offences in 1966 (Pittman, 1969); this accounts for one third of all arrests in that country (Chafetz, 1971).

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 124 , Issue 581 , April 1974 , pp. 327 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1974 

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