Word: anti-drunk
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...page report, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice recently condemned the legal handling of drunkenness as a total mess. In most cities, anti-drunk laws affect only the helpless and the homeless, never affluent alcoholics. In a nightly ritual, police skim the derelicts off Skid Row, parade them before a magistrate and offer such unscientific evidence as "staggering gait" that often overlooks other ailments. Rarely represented by counsel, the bleary defendant is invariably stuffed into the "tank" long enough to get somewhat sobered up-then released and rearrested, often hundreds of times before...
...whose father was an alcoholic, he has been arrested 70 times for public intoxication-a "crime" for which Washington arrests 44,000 people a year. While such police work tidies up the streets, the fact that 70% of the arrests involve repeaters like Easter suggests that Washington's anti-drunk laws are more punitive than preventive. And it is just this premise that has spurred some highly sober Washington lawyers to make Easter's latest conviction a national test case aimed at finding alternatives to the present practice of treating alcoholics like criminals...