Citation

Hollister BC. Crime Delinq. 1970; 16(3): 238-254.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1970, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/001112877001600302

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The widespread problem of indigent alcoholics trapped in the "revolving door" of public intoxication arrests should be remedied by construing alcoholism as a legal defense. The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to issue a federal constitutional mandate requiring all fifty states to provide such a defense through the Eighth Amendment, but that decision does not fore close such a constitutional defense in the future if the proper factual situation reaches the court. Moreover, each state can remedy the incongruous imposition of criminal sanctions on helpless and sick alcoholics by creating a common-law defense of alcoholism to the charge of public intoxication. Such a defense has substantial precedent to support it in the evolving mens rea standard of criminal responsibility increasingly relied upon in state court decisions. More important, common sense supports the creation of this defense to alter the continuing spectacle of skid-row alcoholics being punished for a condition -- public intoxication -- which they cannot control.

Language: en