ALCOHOLICS IN PRISON

...in upstate New York and am shocked by the callousness with which my fellow justices throw the offending alcoholic into jail...

...The story he was now telling of events during that intervening period was far from the kind one might expect from an ex-con...

...Maybe this will teach you a lesson" is a frequently heard phrase when an alcoholic is sentenced to 30 days in jail...

...Gov...

...Many jails in our enlightened country still have "bull pens" where the drunk is forced to sweat it out, usually without medical attention and sometimes without even a mattress to lie on...

...The next stop is prison where dulling regimentation gradually destroys the initiative, self-respect, and love of fellow man needed to live in free society...

...Many justices of the peace are trying to do their job well, but more are serving only because no one else wants the job...

...His wife, Martha, wrote "Tomorrow's Alcoholics" for the September 1950 issue of The Progressive...

...The alleged crimes will differ, but there is frequent repetition of the story of the sick, nervous, confused, and always frightened human being who will plead guilty if told it is the best and easiest way out...

...Dewey told the press that the state of New York spends $25 million annually on prisons...

...Thus many men and women who otherwise would have been given jail or prison sentence are given treatment instead and are returned to society without ever seeing the inside of a cell...

...Talk with your police chief, your sheriff, judge, and district attorney...

...Take these steps and you will be on the way toward helping solve one of America's most serious social problems...

...On our last meeting I had said goodbye to him behind the massive gray walls of one of New York state's largest prisons from which he was being paroled...

...The stigma of being labeled a felon and its psychological effect on both prisoner and his family could be prevented...

...However, a substantial start will have been made when we embark on a program that will get out of prison men who do not belong there, and stop sending in men needing treatment rather than punishment...

...It was the first time we had met in three years, and the only time outside of prison...

...Unless alcohol and fate intervene and cause an accident, he will usually leave the car undamaged a few blocks or a few miles away...

...Many judges with whom I have discussed his case have called it a harsh sentence and have said in their courts he would have been permitted to plead to a lesser offense...

...prison for a two to four year term...

...Then lacking understanding treatment for his basic problem, alcoholim (the state had had four years in which such therapy might have been given), the inevitable binge occurred, culminating in the forging of another check for $25...

...The court, however, did not suspend sentence, but sent him to state's A. KEITH ELLINWOOD is a lay therapist working with alcoholics in New York State's major penal institutions...

...Ask any of us and we will tell you that the principal difference between the alcoholic inside prison and the one outside is that, by the grace of God alone, the latter was never caught...

...And this obtains in the lives of thousands of alcoholics who have managed, like me, to escape the legal consequences of their behavior...

...II The case which shows most clearly the stupid way we handle our sick alcoholics concerns a man who has been in prison nearly 10 years...

...Is your community one of these...

...Men with little or no training in law or penology, often with little social consciousness, and without understanding of what makes a compulsive drinker what he is, are launching thousands on careers of crime...

...Unable to pay a lawyer for advice, he puts himself, by pleading guilty, into a position where no attorney can be of constructive help...

...If the law takes its full course he will be there at least five more...

...But this is only a small beginning which will continue to move with distressing slowness unless you of the public share my concern for hundreds of thousands of sick men and women whom we have placed conveniently out of sight behind prison walls...

...Usually it has been done with no criminal intent but in order to obtain desperately needed alcohol, or as a consequence of the befogged mind and conscience which go with the misuse of liquor...

...For a fraction of the cost of keeping alcoholics confined in penal institutions we could establish rehabilitation centers where, with the help of medicine, psychiatry, and alcoholic therapists, constructive treatment could be given the majority of these cases...

...This happened during a complete blackout, and his only recollection of the entire incident was the awful awakening in jail...

...I have talked with hundreds of alcoholic inmates, many of whom are now making good records on the outside as a result of self-help programs inaugurated in prison...

...During his years of imprisonment, Congressmen have spent mere months in Federal penitentiaries for deliberate padding of payrolls, and gangsters and racketeers continued to buy immunity from the same law enforcement agencies which have loaded our prisons with a high percentage of alcoholics...

...He has been active in a group of alcoholic inmates working together on their own rehabilitation, and his influence for constructive good among his companions is immeasurable...

...I am a J.P...

...For each of us has at some time committed acts regarded by the law as illegal...

...With such centers I believe that from 60 to 70% of our alcoholics in prison could be returned to society as decent, law abiding citizens...

...When he "steals" a car his purpose is transportation, not profit...

...He did not mention, and may not know, that the percentage of alcoholic inmates given opportunity to work with AA is very small indeed...

...Two or three such experiences and he has built up sufficient resentment against what we call "law and justice" to become involved in crime which may lead to the felon's court...

...As a rehabilitated alcoholic I am deeply concerned by the apparent lack of interest in this appalling and costly problem...

...According to Warden Duffy of San Quentin Prison, 70% of our nationwide prison population are alcoholics...

...What counsel does he have...

...During the 11 months from Mar...

...Acting on the advice of an assistant district attorney who suggested the possibility of suspension of sentence, he pleaded guilty and was given a new sentence of 5 to 10 years...

...If this be so, how much better never to have imprisoned them at all...

...The cops said they found a loaded one on me, though...

...The rest, however, feel a continual compulsion to dull the edge of everyday reality with alcohol in order to live in a world which seems always at odds with their frustrated aims and desires...

...In work with prison alcoholics I have attempted to do a follow-up job with many of the men, visiting them in their homes and at work, meeting their families, sometimes talking with employers...

...Thus, a total of $521/2 million provided by the taxpayers is being poured down a rat-hole in one state alone...

...He was speaking of events leading to his imprisonment: "But I never even owned a gun, to say nothing of carrying one," he said...

...It is evidence, also, that the prison alcoholic, like his brother in free society, is essentially a sick man and that what he needs is understanding therapy and the personal application of a new philosophy rather than punishment and segregation...

...And, for the good of your own soul, get acquainted with at least one prison inmate and let him know that you care...

...James G. Terry, and his assistant and lay therapist, Walker Winslow...

...If his 80% estimate is correct, it is evidence that such self-help programs as that offered by AA can work with so-called criminals, even though they lack the benefits they might derive from other rehabilitative resources like psychiatry and medicine...

...He was eager to tell about the new way of life he had discovered and I was as eager to hear it, because I too had found a new and better way of living some years before...

...There is no place to which he can be referred by the court for understanding treatment of his basic problem...

...While under clinical care the alcoholic has ample opportunity to discuss his particular problem with individuals interested primarily in his welfare and speedy adjustment to a normal and constructive way of living...

...actually 20% of that amount would provide alcoholic rehabilitation centers where the problem could be solved in the majority of instances...

...Dig deep enough and ask enough questions of the right people and eventually you will get the full picture...

...voluntary commitment or by referral from the courts, and is continued as long as the psychiatrist deems it advisable...

...A prison guard of 24 years service told me thaT In his opinion a man is a seven times better parole risk on the day he enters than when he leaves...

...The results will amaze you...

...Relating this to Warden Duffy's estimate of the alcoholic percentage in prison populations, we are spending in New York alone $71/2 million each year in perpetuating a bad situation...

...IV The starting point for the criminal record of many alcoholics has been in the office of the small town justice of the peace...

...I think it should be made clear that most alcoholics, in prison or out, have not committed criminal acts with criminal intent...

...I was blacked-out on my feet and couldn't give any argument...

...Admission is either by...

...III Recently Gov...

...Formerly a business man, Ellinwood now devotes much of his time to his rehabilitation work in prisons and some of his time to serving on the staff of the American Friends Service Committee...

...I was convinced he was telling the truth, for on several occasions I, too, had blacked out and had lost days, and once weeks, because of a type of amnesia we alcoholics sometimes have...

...And it could be multiplied many thousand-fold by applying it to the nationwide picture of this phase of America's most rapidly growing public health problem...

...He himself does not recall if the court offered counsel and he had no money with which to retain anyone...

...V Do you know what happens to the individual who is picked up for public intoxication in your home town...

...Following a term in a reformatory for law violation resulting from a teen-age drinking party, he had drifted into a pattern of careless living...

...Most honest prison officials admit our jails and prisons make little pretense of doing either...

...After nearly four years of good conduct he was released on parole and had an excellent record for almost a year...

...Passing a bad check is usually done with full intention of redeeming it the next day, for the alcoholic is responding to the desperate need for the drug which alcohol has become to him...

...Jittery and suffering the terrifying ills which make up the chronic alcoholic's hangover, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a 5 to 10 year term in a state prison...

...The treatment has enabled them to adjust themselves to society...

...Of these five million perhaps 200,000 have been rehabilitated by one means or another...

...And so he stays behind prison bars building up a huge store of resentment against the law he believes has tricked him—and which in some cases has done so—and against a society which does not understand his basic problem and apparently cares less...

...By alcoholics I refer to the estimated five million Americans who are problem drinkers...

...Soon he landed in county court charged with forging a $40 check...

...Anyway, what good did it ever do an alky to argue with a cop...

...And he cannot again be eligible for parole consideration until completion of two-thirds, or almost four years, of the second sentence...

...According to law he now must complete the maximum of his original 5 to 10 year term before starting the second one...

...And when you know the truth do something about it, and do it with the people who are in position to effect the right kind of changes...

...The remaining 231 were readmitted for additional treatment, many on a voluntary self-commitment...

...They said plead guilty and maybe I'd get off easy, maybe even a suspended sentence...

...And, in a small way, I felt I had played a part in his discovery...

...He has lectured on the problems of alcoholism to hundreds of business groups, schools, and civic organizations...

...The reason is apparent: the alcoholic is a natural fall-guy and easy prey for the police...

...This figure does not include the vast welfare costs in caring for the families of alcoholic prisoners, which experts estimate as double the prisoners' care...

...California is pointing the way to a genuine solution of this problem with its new clinic at Santa Rita in Alameda County...

...Is it any wonder alcoholics in prison feel like the original forgotten man and believe society indifferent to their problem...

...1, 1949, to Jan, 31, 1950, a total of 1,088 alcoholics were released from the clinic...

...There is as little regimentation as possible, and the alcoholic is never made to feel he is being punished...

...There are usually sufficient unsolved crimes in any community which the alcoholic, arrested on a nuisance or vagrancy charge, might possibly have committed and for which his befuddled memory can provide no alibi...

...Probably the only reason I, too...

...My own record over many years of compulsive drinking makes more lurid reading than the story of some of my friends who wound up behind prison walls...

...Before he again sees the outside world he will have spent at least 14 years in prison for forgeries totaling $65...

...Four of these years' work has taken me into state and federal prisons...

...have not spent a period in jail or prison is that somehow I always managed to pick up the bad check before the gullible bartender had presented it for payment, and even in the worst of my drinking career I was able to keep one or two friends of influence and prominence who could and did pull me out of scrapes...

...The clinic is under the direction of psychiatrist Dr...

...Of that group 857, or almost 80%, have never been returned...

...Find out how his case is handled in court...

...The episode told by my New England friend could be repeated with modification by scores of others from the group of alcoholics with whom I worked in a New York prison...

...If, as the doctors agree, the problem drinker is a sick man, isn't it time we began thinking about treatment and rehabilitation rather than punishment...

...Such a statement implies that a revamping of our prison system is overdue...

...I am faced with the choice of giving him a jail sentence, a fine, dismissing the case, or suspending sentence...

...For the past eight years I have worked in the field of alcoholic education and rehabilitation...

...I was even more deeply shocked on entering office to learn that as a justice there is nothing constructive I can do to help the alcoholic should he appear in my court...

...In almost every case I have found them to be normal, wholesome men just like other alcoholics who have tound the answer to their problem and have learned to live without the need to drink...

...At long last medical science has decided they are suffering from a disease rather than moral delinquency...

...Dewey also said that in Sing Sing, Walkhill, and Attica prisons, Alcoholics Anonymous had been permitted to organize groups, and that 80% of the inmates so affiliated made good adjustment to life when released or paroled...