No other class of the sick includes so great a number of individual cases. We find, for example, the almost incredible fact staring us in the face that more than one third of all the patients admitted to Bellevue Hospital in New York City are sent there by alcohol, while less than two per cent. are sent there by habit-forming drugs.
I am casting no reflection upon this or any other institution when I say that there and elsewhere little understanding is shown in dealing with these cases. As a matter of fact, no intelligence is anywhere shown in this matter. The policeman who finds a drunken man or woman on his beat arrests the unfortunate with as much wrath and probably as much brutality as he would show a burglar or a murderer; the committing magistrate before whom the victim is taken treats him or her precisely as he would treat a criminal; in the various penal institutions to which this man or woman is committed the idea upon which their whole treatment is based is that of punishment.
It seems to me that the imperfections of this system might most easily be corrected by the committing magistrates. It is the largest problem which confronts these officials; therefore they might very well afford the time necessary to study it carefully. Concerted action by this group of the judiciary might accomplish worthy results almost immediately. As matters are at present organized, the committing magistrate may do any one of four things with an inebriate who has been brought before him: he can release him without penalty, he can put him on probation, he can fine him, he can imprison him. I have yet to discover any one capable of telling me why measures of this sort can possibly be expected to have a beneficial effect upon a person who through over-indulgence has set up in his system a demand for alcohol.
I have no wish to appear publicly as the critic of our petit judiciary, but no class of men is less informed upon this subject—the one subject upon which they should be best informed—than the committing magistrates not only of the United States, but of every other country in the world. A year or two ago I made a somewhat comprehensive European tour, and studied carefully the methods of dealing with inebriety. Nowhere did I find the faintest indication of a tendency for real intelligence in regard to the matter. We insist upon special education for the professors of our colleges; yet the influence of a committing magistrate upon the human life that is brought under his direct sphere of influence may be greater even than that of a college professor or a college student, and of our committing magistrate we make no educational demand whatsoever, and have never established even a minimum standard of intelligent information for our petit bench. It is my belief that expert sociological knowledge should be required of every man considered for the important post of committing magistrate.
RESPONSIBILITY OF THE MAGISTRATE
The fact that in New York State a colony for inebriates has been established by law makes this special knowledge more necessary there than it was before. Wherever such institutions have been founded, and the courts may contribute to their population by commitment, an unintelligent magistrate finds it within his power not rarely, but every day, to do more harm during one session of his court than he is likely to find it within the scope of his intelligence to do good during the course of a year’s sitting. I find it impossible to be otherwise than bitterly pessimistic in regard to the work our courts are doing with alcoholics.
Under the New York law, a man taken for the first time before a magistrate and charged with alcoholism must either be fined or told that if he again appears charged with that offense, he will be subject to commitment to the inebriate farm for a period of not less than three months. By this procedure not one thing has been accomplished toward the salvation of the man. If he is not committed, but is only threatened and ordered to report weekly or oftener to the probation officer or the court itself, the greatest of all damage has been done, since the man’s pride has been depreciated. After definite medical treatment has been administered to an inebriate, the only other thing that can be done is to make an intelligent appeal to his pride. In this appeal is included at least one half the possibilities of his salvation. Nowhere save in a few instances in New York City is the alcoholic case treated with medical intelligence, and nowhere in the world is the balance of the necessary treatment—the right appeal to pride—carried out with any degree of common sense.
I find one system of special horror in this treatment of inebriates—committing a man for three months, then for six months, and then for twelve. No more certain means could be devised to increase the harm done by alcohol to the community. Not only does this course fail to help the man in any measure whatsoever, but it increases the unspeakable harm which his misfortune must inflict upon his family. In most instances such a commitment not only means the man’s separation from his means of livelihood for the period of its duration, but his discharge from it as the result of this utterly inefficient and legally inflicted disgrace.
The whole effort of society in dealing with the alcoholic should be to prevent those things which at present are the very ones which it accomplishes—mental depression, loss of pride, disgrace, and loss of social position. I am inclined to think that as the world grows older it will be more and more convinced of the inefficiency of punishment, and more and more aware of the necessity of reform through helpfulness.
It seems obvious that penalization, probationary influences, or colonization must be utterly useless in removing from a man’s physical system the craving for alcohol. Therefore it is equally obvious that their only successful mission must be to remove the victim of drink from contact with society for the length of time during which his sentence is operative. The man who is in all probability incurable is not put permanently out of harm’s way by these means, or placed where he can do no harm; the man who has good stuff in him but who has through chance used drugs to excess upon one or more occasion is offered by these methods nothing in the nature of a fair show toward regaining his usefulness.