Other authors compare the geography of these crimes with the consumption of alcohol. Professor Aschaffenburg, for example, in the study already quoted, points out the fact that in Germany the countries with the greatest number of assaults are also those where there is the largest consumption of alcohol.[542]
However, although these indirect methods are not without value, it seems to me that since they contain so many elements of uncertainty they yield to the direct method.[543] It is for this reason that I shall follow here especially the direct method and shall indicate the percentage of those who have committed these crimes when they were in a state of intoxication. Though making use of this direct method I do not think it infallible, but it is less liable to error than the others. [[641]]The especial weakness of it is that the persons who are accused pretend in extenuation that they committed their crimes in a state of drunkenness. Good statistics do not rely solely upon the statements of the prisoners, but also upon the facts brought out at the trial. And then, as Professor Löffler remarks, all those arraigned are not acute enough to simulate a state of drunkenness, and there are even those who, although addicted to overindulgence in alcohol, will deny that they were intoxicated, either from shame, or for fear of a more severe punishment.
Most criminal statistics do not concern themselves with this subject, and even those that do are less detailed than we might wish. Nevertheless they are sufficient, I believe, to prove the correlation in question.
Austria, 1896–1897.[544]
| Crimes. | Percentage of Convicts who Committed their Crimes in a State of Drunkenness. | |
| Vienna. | Korneuburg. | |
| Rebellion | 77.7 | 70.0 |
| Malicious mischief | 63.4 | 43.5 |
| Threats | 56.8 | 46.7 |
| Serious assaults | 54.1 | 56.4 |
Baden (Grand Duchy), 1895.
In 1895 64% of the cases of rebellion and 46% of the assaults were committed in a state of inebriety.[545]
Belgium, 1872–1895.
Out of the 2,045 convicts who entered the central prison at Louvain from 1874 to 1895, 344 or 16.8% were drunk at the time of committing the crime; of the 130 sentenced to hard labor for life 53, or 40.7%; of the 88 condemned to death 38, or 43.1%.[546] If we consider that a very great number of these criminals were guilty of economic crimes, and doubtless did not commit these in a state of intoxication, the percentage of those who must have committed crimes of vengeance in such a condition becomes very large. [[642]]
France.