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Source: 1965 Toronto International Convention – 1965 Toronto Int, AA and the Courts Toronto Canada Part 1 of 2.mp3 File: 1965-toronto-international-convention-1965-toronto-int-aa-and-the-courts-toronto-canada-part-1-of-2.mp3 Duration: 00:58:14
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These two speakers were in Box L3 from Robbie R., received December 10, 1965. Good morning, and welcome to this meeting of AA and McCourt. My name is Paula. I'm an alcoholic and a member of the grapevine staff. Hi. Shall we have a moment of silence and reflect on the recovery through AA of the past 30 years? God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, the wisdom to know the difference.
There may be some who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level. If so, we respectfully ask that no AA speaker or member be identified by full name in published or broadcast reports of our meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential to our efforts to help other alcoholics, and our tradition of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personality.
It is a delight for me to be able to introduce to you the chairman of this meeting, Mary Bernson, who was elected to the General Service Board in 1962, Class B trustee. Mary has been very active on many of the committees. I would like to give you Mary. Good morning. How are you? Nice to be here. And this is a charming duty because all I have to do is to introduce my roster of very distinguished speakers and sit down.
I think without doing too much editorializing, I might just underline the climate of what we are about to talk about this morning because it is entitled AA and the Court. It happens to be my personal privilege to be a member of the Bar of the State of New York, and it is of particular interest to me how the courts look upon and deal with the disease of which I am a happy victim at this point. Our first speaker this morning is Judge John Murtaugh of New York City. He is a colleague of ours on the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous, is a Class A trustee, and was elected to the Board in April of 1962.
He is presently Administrative Judge of the Criminal Court of New York City, had previously been Chief Justice of the Court of Special Sessions, Chief City Magistrate, and Commissioner of Investigations in New York City. As many of you probably know, New York City is one of the most real random samples of raw material with respect to alcoholism in the court that we have in the country. We are, we alcoholics, and all alcoholics in or out of AA are especially indebted to Judge Murtaugh for his long and continuing interest in alcoholism. I give you Judge Murtaugh.
[00:05:05]
Judge Murtaugh. Mary, Tom, Judge Daly, many friends in Alcoholics Anonymous, and members of AA. It is a thrill to join with you once again on one of your anniversaries here in Toronto. My association with AA is largely coterminous with my service in the court. Back in 1950, when I first took the bench, one of the problems that immediately struck me was the group of individuals lined up before the bench on a drunk charge.
I remember some years back reading an excellent book on the magistrate's courts in London. A distinguished lawyer begins that book with the question, what are the magistrate's courts? And he answers it by quoting a lovely British lady who said it was the courts where they do the drunks. With that answer, he proceeds to expound on the work of the magistrate's courts, and not once again does he ever mention the approach to the alcoholics.
I think that is very significant, because that generally is the judicial attitude. An attitude that recognizes that this is a tremendous problem for the courts in numbers, but seems to be of the opinion that it is not a significant problem. I have never been able to accept this point of view. It seems to me that it is one of the great challenges to the judiciary to approach it intelligently and adequately.
I remember when I first beheld the problem, the thought ran through my mind as to why, or why were we approaching it as we were, and why were the individuals before the bench? In New York City, we approach the problem in appearance a little differently than elsewhere. We have a charge of disorderly conduct, which is the charge leveled against a fellow who is locked up because he is under the weather, or at least ostensibly because he is under the weather.
They are arraigned before the judge in groups of about a dozen. The charge is read to them. Traditionally, they invariably plead guilty, and then the judge imposes a jail sentence, lesser or greater. Like so many courts in my years, we have gone through attempts to deal with the problem constructively. We've had special courts. We've had programs that aspire to be rehabilitative in nature. We had the famous Homeless Men's Court.
We had the project at Heart Island, most of which have gone by the boards to a greater or less extent. This has been to a degree because of city limitations, governmental limitations, and partially because realistically those involved have eventually come to the conclusion that their efforts are not very effective. In those early days in the early 1950s, I can claim that I had as much to do with the attempt to do something new as anyone.
I was the author of new courts. I involved myself in the rehabilitative efforts of the Department of Welfare. But as I say, they eventually came to naught. Now, in my efforts to be helpful, inevitably I somehow got involved with Alcoholics Anonymous.
[00:10:02]
My early probings were on the Bowery. I looked around to see what agencies might be able to shed light on the problem and might be helpful. Within some six months after I had come to the court, a good 12-stepper by the name of Larry arrived. Typical AA 12-stepper. He had no appointment. He didn't feel he needed one, I guess. But I received him. And Larry came in. I figured I would give him 10 or 15 minutes.
I got my first lesson in alcoholism. It took over an hour to get rid of him. I learned that an alcoholic is a man of his word. Being a non-alcoholic and being a bit of a cynic, there was one thing I was sure of. And that was that Larry had an angle. And so all through that hour, I looked for him to put the appropriate weight on. And he did. And that was that Larry had an angle. And so all through that hour, I looked for him to put the approach on me.
But all Larry did was tell me what a great institution AA was. And more particularly, he was a persuasive person. To tell me how the various people in institutions were so helpful to AA. To express the gratitude of AA for everyone in authority. After about an hour, I eased him out. I thought I was through. But I wasn't. Larry, unbeknownst to me, was 12-stepping me. He was trying to get through my head the concept, the philosophy, if you will, of AA.
So every few months, he took some pretext or another to return. And he was such a pleasant fellow that I had no power of resistance. Finally, after maybe a half dozen meetings, he put the bite on me. He asked me to address an AA meeting. And being a great 12-stepper, he knew how to ask. He didn't give me a date. He left it entirely on my own. He said, anytime, the next six months. Well, he suggested a date finally some four months off, which I readily accepted because four months seems a long distance.
But the four months went by very quickly, and the date was approaching. And faced with the dilemma of what to say to a group in AA, scratching my head, I didn't know what I would say. So I finally called Larry and told him that something had come up, and I couldn't make the meeting. I thought that this would sort of dampen Larry's ardor, but it didn't. He resumed his visits, and eventually he asked me again to attend an AA meeting, but this time he omitted the request to speak, and so I appeared.
That was my first meeting in AA. It took Larry almost three years to get me there, but he did. I went there with another non-alcoholic who was involved in the work, a good priest, from the Bowery. One of the most convincing experiences I think he had, and certainly that I've ever had, of the validity of AA was his recognizing a half dozen of the boys that had frequented the Holy Name Center for Homeless Men and who had disappeared, he thought, to Potter's grave.
And there they were, alive, healthy, and yes, sober in AA. It was thrilling to him, and of course it raised my curiosity greatly. This was followed by attendance shortly after that at the great school at Yale on alcoholism. I see Dr. Thiebaud there. I remember his holding forth. I remember his kind remarks with regard to AA, and indeed just about every lecturer, they agreed on little except etc., they agreed on little except the efficacy of AA. This was, of course, challenging. Reflecting
[00:15:09]
on these people, all of whom, in his own field, was a true expert, and they were from all of the disciplines, finding different emphasis, different opinions with regard to the various phases of a problem, and yet finding a universal agreement on something that had evolved from a group of laymen, this from people largely scientific, was indeed strong reason to explore what AA was all about. Among other things, a meeting was put on by members of AA who were present in the class. As a result, I attended my second meeting in AA. This, again, like so many meetings in AA, had a tremendous effect on me. I've often said that I would much sooner listen than speak if the speaker were a member of AA. Be the AA speaker literate or not, be he educated or otherwise, he almost invariably, if not invariably, is a great artist. Whatever his command of the English is, he is speaking from the heart, he is speaking from utter conviction, and he is speaking the truth. His message, invariably, is inspiring and challenging. I have never ceased, over the years, to enjoy addressing an AA group not to address it, but rather to listen to those who are speaking as recovered alcoholics.
Those thirty days in Yale, and ever since that incidentally, I have boasted that I got my law at Harvard and my alcohol at Yale. But ever since that experience, I have been inspired further to try to make just a slight contribution to a more intelligent approach to this problem by society. Getting back to the courts, the approach of locking up people who are under the weather is not new. We find a reference in Blackstone to the beginning, to the enactment of a law in the 1600s in England whereby the individual was to be put in the stock for six hours to ensure that he didn't do harm to himself. That is probably one of the earliest beginnings of a police and judicial approach to the problem. It may be the beginning, but today it is big business. I think many here have little comprehension that in the United States, literally one out of every two arrests is for nothing other than public intoxication. That's a staggering figure, and yet it is literally true. You take all arrests from murder down to disorderly conduct, one out of every two is of people who allegedly are disorderly and drunk. The tremendous waste of police manpower, among other things. And to my mind, it exemplifies man's inhumanity to man. Not only is one out of every two arrests for public drunkenness, but if you take the population of our county jails from coast to coast in the United States, 50% of the population, over 50%, are people arrested for drunkenness. Now as I say, in New York City, in the early days, I took pride in the fact that we were humanizing, if you will, the approach. For a short period of time, we did have AA actually working in the courtroom. At this point in our history, the
[00:20:00]
most we can boast of, and we could boast of this in 1950, is that we are largely unique in New York City for our negative approach, if you will, to the problem. In the main, the sentence of the court is a suspended sentence. We have an awareness that in the main we can't make a contribution, or that in any event, the wherewithal with which the average court is provided makes no contribution at all. This isn't entirely true elsewhere.
In many cities, a substantial jail sentence is regularly meted out. Only a month or six weeks ago, I visited in Washington, D.C., our nation's capital. I sat on the bench alongside the judge, and one of the main orders of business was the handling of drunk arrests. The judge there was striving hard to be helpful. He involved the probation authorities whenever he could. Incidentally, that is one court where a great member of Alcoholics Anonymous is chief probation officer, and where a very determined effort for many years has taken place to reach the alcoholics and to be helpful. Regular meetings are held in the courthouse under the auspices of AA. But the sad part that I witnessed in this court some six weeks ago was that in about one of every three cases, the judge despaired of the fellow helping himself and used as an alternative the imposition of the maximum sentence of three months. And since, to the judicial mind then presiding, this was not sufficient, a substantial fine with an alternative of thirty days was added to the end that the individual would do four months. This kind of thing leads to the question as to the right of society to deal with the problem by force. When you think of a judge sitting on the bench, if you're at all philosophical, you eventually ask yourself, by what right does he sit there? And more particularly, by what right does he exercise authority? Whoever he is, he's as human as all of us.
He's just one of us who, by some fortuitous circumstances, one philosophic judge in New York remarks that a judge is nothing but a lawyer who, at the right time, in the right place, knew the right person. Or whatever the merit of that definition is, and I think there is great merit in it, is a human being wielding power. And we have a right to ask, by what authority? The great Thomistic philosophers tell us that government, police, the judiciary, exercise power only properly in a very limited sense. Essentially, says the Thomistic philosopher, law, human law, is the embodiment of the moral law, only in that narrow area where violations of the moral law affect the common good. Now, in plain ordinary English, the deviant should be brought to book only if he is a real threat to the community. My opinion, the hapless individuals who are brought into a courtroom on a drunk charge are, of course, largely sinning, if at all, against themselves. The inconvenience to the more fortunate is indeed minimal. If, indeed, the individual is ever to be called to book, it should be on judgment day alone. And there,
[00:25:02]
personally, I think he will meet an all-merciful God who knows that he made us, all of us, a bit weak. Whatever his judgment is, let us continue to reflect on the right of man to call him to account. Here are groups of individuals, for example, in the District of Columbia, gathered before the bench. The plea may be guilty, as it invariably is in New York, or he may be found guilty after trial. How can the judge sitting on the bench bring himself to a judgment, either, that a sentence of four months is merited for punishment or for rehabilitation? How can he suddenly become so omniscient? Now, incidentally, in the District of Columbia, to burlesque the cruelty of the process, I noted this series of events. Since the approach is a little on the harsh side, the police are more often than in New York, for example, discommoded by a plea of not guilty and a resultant appearance in court. Now, of course, if you think through the fact that half the arrests in this country are for being drunk, you realize that if all the cops were brought to court, we'd be a little shorthanded in more important business. Well, unfortunately, the judicial mind sometimes adjusts to a dilemma of this kind. And what they do in the District of Columbia, and frankly, this is a national disgrace because this is the United States government in operation, about two in the morning, when the lad is sleeping it off in a cell, he is visited by the fellow who is referred to as the turnkey, a fellow who has the key to the cell, and he inquires of this fellow, allegedly drunk, as to how he pleads. And in his drunken state, he frequently says guilty. Well, if fortunately he says guilty, then the arresting officer is excused from his appearance the next morning. Of course, the difficulty arises that frequently, the fellow who said guilty in his drunken state has a change of heart in his more sober state, and so he asks the following morning to plead not guilty. But the court has adjusted to this.
Instead of calling in the arresting officer, they call in the fellow who took the plea, the turnkey, he takes the stand, is sworn, and he testifies that at the time he pleaded guilty, he was drunk. And on that evidence, they convict him of public drunkenness. It's monstrous, but it's going on today in the District of Columbia. All of this reinforces my query as to the right of society to lock these people up. We don't basically have the right to make a pathological condition a crime. Now, I would be seriously disturbed about this problem, of course, if the charge were really drunkenness. But I might add, by way of complete amplification of my thinking, that in my opinion, these arrests are not for drunkenness. Many of those on skid row, many of these so-called chronic drunk arrests, are individuals with a pathological craving for drink, alcoholics as you and I know. But many authorities suggest that the percentage of them is relatively low, some saying as low as 20 percent. That many on skid row are people who have adopted the culture…
[00:30:12]
Now this is an interesting question, but whether or not it is true, I suggest that many drinkers who descend to Skid Row, whether they be alcoholic or not, are much more disturbed generally than the average alcoholic, for example, seen in AA. So many of these individuals on Skid Row are grossly inadequate human beings, beings who because of deprivation, socially, emotionally, materially, in early childhood, were never integrated to the end that as they begin to emerge into adolescence and early manhood, they have difficulty in adjusting with their fellow man.
They have difficulty in coping with life. They obtain a greater degree of security, if you will, by seeking a habitat in Skid Row. And on the other hand, Skid Row inevitably brings them down lower than they were before. Now actually, what I think the drunk arrest represents is not so much an intolerance of drink or excessive drinking as it is society's attempt to meet its own obligations and to provide for the neediest among us.
Inescapably, those of us who are the more fortunate in society, seeing Skid Row or its equivalents wherever it exists, we are embarrassed. Our consciences bother us because we recognize an area as to which we have a responsibility, as to which we are not equal. Recognizing this, we feel a necessity of doing something about it. What we do about it is to avoid it by locking the fellows up. This is no answer at all.
This is society's escape. I repeat, I do not think in the first place we have a right to lock them up. We are locking them up not because they are drunk. We are locking them up because they are inadequate. We are avoiding our obligation to provide for the neediest among us. Now to close my remarks, I might seem, as I said the New York courts were at the outset, negative in my approach. On the contrary, I think we must become negative before we become positive.
Society has a fundamental obligation, as represented in our recent national approach to the problem of poverty, to provide for the neediest among us. We should have police officers, specially trained in human inadequacy, specially trained in alcoholism, assigned to areas such as those frequented by the Skid Row derelict, to help these fellows and not to punish them. When they are unconscious or semi-conscious and pose a threat to their own welfare, these men could escort them, if you will, to a decent shelter where society could provide the various resources which might be of help.
Number one among these, for those who have an alcoholic problem, I would, of course, enlist the help, the great help, of Alcoholics Anonymous. This would, however, be essentially on a voluntary plan. Society has an obligation to help. It has no right to punish. The police and judicial approach to this problem is a national scandal. Thank you. Thank you, John.
[00:35:07]
I think you see why we are so fortunate as to have Judge Murtaugh associated with us in AA. Our next speaker has a special kind of double vision because he is a member of my world and yours in that he is an arrested alcoholic. And he is also a police officer and one of the arms of the court. Tom is a member of the police force of Stanford, Connecticut. His title is Rehabilitation Officer of the Stanford Police Department, where he is now assigned to alcoholic rehabilitation.
I give you Tom. Thank you, Mary, Paula, Judge Murtaugh, Judge Daly, and friends of AA. My name is Tom Dee, and I'm an alcoholic. Although I started drinking at the age of 14, I won't go into details about the early years of my drinking history. I'll begin my story with my appointment to the Stanford Police Department in August 1940. At that time, instead of congratulating me, the then chief of police told me that the first time he found me drinking on the job, he would fire me.
This was a pretty good indication that I had already acquired a reputation for drinking too much, too often, and too wisely. With the arrogance that seems to be typical of so many of us alcoholics, I paid no attention to my chief. And during the next seven years, my drinking went from bad to worse. But although I was frequently caught, I wasn't fired. And I think there were two reasons for this. The first was that these were the war years, and there was a serious manpower shortage.
The second was that had the chief sought to get rid of me, he would have had to take the same action against eight or ten other police officers who shared my problem. Therefore, he sought to punish us by assigning us to the midnight shift from 12 o'clock to 8 a.m. each time we were caught. Sometimes when I had been on good behavior for about three months, one of the sergeants would put in a good word for me with the captain, and I would be put back on a regular rotation of shifts.
But actually, I averaged about eight months on the midnight shift each year through this seven years. I tried various expedients such as substituting gin for rye, but they got me nowhere. And finally, I reached the point where I found it absolutely necessary to have a drink while working as well as when off duty. In February 1947, the law of averages caught up with me. I had worked the midnight shift in the south end of Stanford.
This was one of my favorite beats because I knew all the tavern owners, and there were also a number of private drinking households which I could visit. I'm told that I really went overboard that night. My shift changed from 4 p.m. until midnight that same day. I made my first ring at 4.40 and told the sergeant I was going home for supper. Of course, I had no desire for food. I simply wanted to get a drink.
My wife was not home that evening, but when she returned at 10 o'clock, she found the sergeant and a patrolman waiting at the door for me. They found me asleep on a chair in the living room, awakened me, and took me to headquarters. I figured this would be the same old routine, that I would be sent home again and told to go on the midnight shift again. But this time it was different. At headquarters, the sergeant asked for my gun and badge and told me to be in the chief's office at 9 o'clock the next morning.
I appeared and was suspended. I stayed sober for the next five days until my hearing before the safety board. After the liberating, they gave me the following sentence. Assignment to the midnight shift indefinitely, loss of a month's pay, and loss of vacation. And then they tacked down a little amendment. I must take the pledge to join AA. Well, I went to the priest's home, rang the doorbell. The wrong priest came to the door, so no pledge.
There was no AA either, because while I had never had any contact with the organization, I believe they were a bunch of holy rollers and not the type of person with whom I should be associating.
[00:40:01]
So I simply went back to work on the 4th and did such a good police job that I reinstated myself in the good graces of the chief. I did not touch a drink for the next six months. Then I persuaded the chief to give me a short vacation. An hour after the vacation started, I was drunk again, and I remained in that condition for four or five days. My wife talked to me, and I agreed I would have to do something about my drinking, so I called AA.
One of the members came and took me to my first meeting in Stanford. Unfortunately, it was a business meeting, so I didn't learn very much about AA that night. But a few days later, two members took me to the annual AA dinner in Greenwich. At this meeting, I learned something that no doctor had told me during the past 15 or 18 years, that I was an alcoholic. There were three speakers at that meeting, and the fact that each one stood up and opened his remarks with the frank admission that he was an alcoholic impressed me very deeply.
I began to attend AA meetings in Stanford and surrounding communities three or four nights a week and became active in the fellowship. My captain discovered that I was doing something about my drinking and took me off the night shift and placed me on a three-shift rotation. After I had been in AA about a year, I was assigned to a radio car. Then, in spite of all the good things that had happened to me on my vacation in September 1949, I went on another drunk.
This was my most miserable experience with drinking, because I couldn't enjoy it. Now my conscience was bothering me, and so were my AA friends. I had my supply hidden in the cellar, and by the time I could get down from the third floor for a drink and return upstairs again, someone from AA would be there, waiting for me. This went on for three days until one of my friends suggested that I go away to dry up.
I went to High Watch, a rest home operated by AAs in Kent, Connecticut, and stayed there for two weeks. By the grace of God and with the help of AA, I haven't had a drink since. I thought I would be back to the midnight shift again, but I was welcomed back to the police department, and I was also welcomed back to AA. No one said anything about my slip. No one criticized me or lectured me. They simply welcomed me back into the fellowship as if nothing had happened.
In the years that followed, I came to realize that my first approach to AA had been for the purpose of saving my job. But when I returned, I went back for Tom D. I attended as many AA meetings as possible and made as many 12-step calls as possible, and it worked, just as I believe it will work for any alcoholic who will work at the program. As the years of my sobriety increased, other members of the police department began to call me in to see if I could help in cases involving a drinking problem.
The 1956 new chief of police, Joseph Kinsella, was appointed to Stanford. Chief Kinsella is a man who truly loves alcoholics. He has a deep and compassionate understanding of the alcoholic and his problems, and he cares about what happens to the alcoholic. Chief Kinsella and another officer made it a practice to attend almost every court session involving a family drinking problem. Then they would get in touch with me and see what I could do to be of some personal help with the alcoholic involved.
When my police duties made it impossible, I would call on one of my many AA friends to take over the cases. In Stanford, we have an annual AA dinner, and several years ago, I was given the privilege of selecting police and city officials to be invited. Chief Kinsella has never missed one of these dinners for the past 12 or 13 years. The judges and prosecutors have always been present, and at least 50 members of the police department, both patrolmen and officers, have also attended.
These dinners have been an important factor in educating the Stanford Police Department, as well as our judges and prosecutors, to a better understanding of the alcoholic and his problems. In 1960, Chief Kinsella assigned me to the Youth Bureau of the Stanford Police Department on a trial basis to work solely with alcoholics, and in 1962, through his efforts, I was reclassified as rehabilitation officer.
This is a very unique program, and Chief Kinsella's approach to it has certainly been unique, so I should explain the circumstances under which I conduct my activities. Stanford is a city of approximately 100,000 population, and has grown very rapidly during the past 10 or 20 years. Its per capita income is much higher than that of the country as a whole. A large proportion of the breadwinners of the families commute to New York to work.
It is also a community that serves as a trading center for the surrounding areas and manages the economy. Trading Center for the Surrounding Areas, and many of the New York stores have established branches in our city in recent years.
[00:45:00]
We also have had a considerable number of factories, for the most part skilled labor. We are a city of families living together in private homes or apartments. My work has been directed mainly to attempting to rehabilitate the alcoholic individual as well as the family involved. I do not handle any drunken driving cases, nor do I handle cases involving the commission of serious crimes. The per capita consumption of liquor in Stanford is much higher than it is for the country as a whole, and the proportion of our citizens, including women, who become afflicted with alcoholism is also much higher.
In fact, the number of women coming to our AA groups today approximates the number of men. As you know, alcoholics are likely to become quite troublesome or even violent when they are drinking, and eventually disturbance will progress to a point in utter desperation the wife or husband or some other member of the family will call the police. These calls have become a serious drain on the energies of our department.
What makes our program unique is that attempts to take responsibility for dealing with a group of sick people are the hands of the police officer untrained in relation to alcoholism and placed in the hands of a specialist. It represents an effort to save a vast expenditure of time and equipment, which might more properly be devoted to more serious police problems. It represents a savings to the taxpayers of Stanford, which is the only city which I know has assigned a specialist to this field.
I may not be the person best qualified for this task, but at least I know something about alcoholism and working with alcoholics from personal experience. During the first five years that this program has been in operation, I have handled more than 360 individual cases. The assignment has involved making more than a thousand investigations. In 1964, there were 438 interviews of individuals, families, clergy, and farmhands, and et cetera.
I talked to the alcoholic and endeavored to find out whether he or she is interested in trying to do something about his drinking problem. If so, I suggest that he or she attend AA meetings or, where it is advisable, go away for treatment. I should explain that many of the cases assigned to me have advanced to the point where there has been a separation of the family. The alcoholic is either unemployed or is about to be dismissed due to his or her condition.
Many are on the verge of complete breakdown, both mental as well as physical, so that there may be a real need for some form of treatment other than AA meetings as a first step. Thus, of the first 167 cases assigned to me for investigations and follow-up, 59 were taken to institutions or hospitals that have the necessary personnel and equipment specifically required for the treatment of alcoholism.
These institutions or hospitals are located throughout Connecticut, New York State, and as far away as Dublin, New Hampshire. Many of them are rest homes run by AA members. I estimate that I have driven approximately 15,000 miles in making these trips and have continued up to the present. When the alcoholic returns to town, another effort is made to have him or her attend AA meetings. If the alcoholic is willing, a male or female member of AA will call upon him or her.
At least 90 percent of all my cases have been introduced to AA in this way. I have no record to show how many have joined AA, but I do know that more than 50 are still active in groups of staffers. The important thing is that an introduction to AA is made. It has been very encouraging for me to witness the number of cases I handled early in the program where the individual decided that AA was not for him or her, but where they are now returning to the group two or three years later and have become our most active members.
The best way that I know to determine the success of this program lies in the absence of a repeat call from families of the alcoholic affected. Of the first 47 cases handled in 1960, there have been no repeat calls from 28 of the families, and only two of the 47 families made repeat calls in 1963. Of the 93 cases handled in 1961, there have been no repeat calls from 79 of the families. Of the 77 cases handled in 1962, there have been no repeat calls from 63 of the families.
I can testify from personal experience that the great majority of 360 individuals I have worked with have been returned to normal living with their families. Most of these people are now gainfully employed and are rehabilitated, useful citizens of Stanford or other communities. Of course there have been failures. Twelve investigations or calls were needed in a single year in connection with one case,
[00:50:01]
and 14 separate investigations or calls in two years in another. But that does not mean the program has been unproductive. It simply means that some acute cases require more intensive treatment if results are to be obtained. I am happy to report that such results have been obtained in some of the most desperate cases over the five-year period. Another important development has been the extent to which my fellow officers in the Stanford Police Department have become aware of what we are trying to do and have learned to sympathize with our efforts.
In the first year in which the program was in operation, 80% of my investigations were made after prior direct police contact with the alcoholic. The police officer investigated a complaint from the husband or wife, possibly made an arrest, and I was not brought into the picture until later. In contrast, during the second year of the program, only 50% of the cases came after prior police contact. Since then, all members of the Stanford Police Department, as well as a large number of the people of our city, have become aware and have gained a better understanding of the functions and the duties of the Rehabilitation Bureau.
As a result, direct police contact precedes only 10% of the investigations I make today. Of course, in many cases investigated, an arrest has already been made. Sometimes it cannot be avoided. However, we have a very unusual arrangement in Stanford. Often for the family's peace of mind or for the alcoholic's own safety, I must take him to the police headquarters and put him in a cell overnight. However, the next day, after he has sobered up, if he shows evidence of a desire to do something about his drinking problems, he is released and no arrest ever shows on the books.
So it is a minority of the cases wherein an arrest has been made and placed on our books that brings me into contact with the courts. First, I talk to the alcoholic to determine whether he or she wants to be rehabilitated, particularly where first offenders are involved. I will ask the prosecutor to request a postponement or a hearing of the case for one month. During that time, I seek to determine how the party involved conducts himself in connection with alcohol.
The second month's postponement may be requested for the same purpose. If during this two-month period the alcoholic can demonstrate that he or she is doing something about his or her problem, the complainant in the case will generally agree to have the charges withdrawn. The prosecutor then asks the judge's finale pro se the case. The cooperation of the members of our circuit court have been extremely good in this connection.
Our circuit court judges and prosecutors are most understanding. I have yet to come across a case in which I have recommended that the charges be dismissed where the prosecutor and the judge did not agree to do so. In the small minority of the cases, the judge will suspend the sentence and parole the defendant in my custody. I believe that this attitude on the part of the circuit court may be due to the fact that some of the judiciaries themselves are alcoholics and members of AA.
And I believe that they have educated their conferrees to a sympathetic understanding of the problem. Connecticut is also very fortunate in that the presiding judge of our circuit court, Judge Rubinow, has taken a personal interest in alcoholics to the extent that he has established an honor court for alcoholics in Harford in which carefully screened alcoholics are given the option of attending in lieu of being sentenced.
This honor court, which is Pattern F1, originated in Des Moines, Iowa, by an AA judge, is outside my jurisdiction. But I understand the good results are being obtained from the standpoint of the alcoholic. Procedures are now underway for the start of a second honor court in New Haven. Connecticut was also the first state to have a tax-supported alcoholism commission, which now operates outpatient clinics in six cities in the state as well as Blue Hills Hospital in Harford.
This institution has operated exclusively for the treatment of alcoholics. The clinic at Stanford is run by two psychiatrists and a social worker, all of whom are very friendly to AA. They have referred many cases to me, and I have taken many patients to Blue Hills Hospital, where they can receive the medical and mental health and assistance that they need. The state also operates a large psychiatric hospital in Newtown, which is not exclusively for alcoholics, but will accept them in acute state for treatment.
I have taken a large number of people to this institution. Personally, I wish that they would accept many of these alcoholic patients for longer periods of treatment. However, the hospital does furnish facilities where the penniless or homeless alcoholic can sober up under proper medical care, and to that extent it serves its purpose.
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On the whole, I feel that Connecticut is outstanding in care and consideration it gives to its alcoholic population, and that the attitude of the courts is equally helpful. The effectiveness of our rehabilitation bureau would be seriously diminished without the cooperation that we receive from both these sources. As our work has become better known, many manufacturing concerns have contacted our office for the purpose of obtaining help for employees who have drinking problems resulting in protracted absenteeism, another typical deficiency that afflicts the alcoholic employee.
We give these people all the help we can, and in turn many of the manufacturing firms have been receptive to recommendations which we will make regarding employment. I have in mind the case of a young man who was turned over to me after his arrest in 1963 for intoxication and damage to private property. At my suggestion, he joined AA and became active in the group. He had always been a drifter who held no steady position at any time.
I arranged for him to apply for a position at Pitney Bowes Incorporated, our largest manufacturing company which produces the nationally known postage meter. There he took an aptitude test and surprisingly attained the highest mark of any applicant during the past ten years. The personnel manager contacted me on January 5, 1964 and said he wished to hire this man but sought my advice of desirability of doing so.
I told him I could give him no guarantees, but I believed they would not be making a mistake. And the man was hired. He has turned out to be a most capable employee, still with the firm that is highly regarded both because of the caliber of his work and his versatility. Because of his fine example, several other people with whom I have had work with have been successful in securing employment at Pitney Bowes.
In a report dated August 30, 1963, Joseph W. Kinsella, Stanford's chief of police, stated there was an overwhelming vindication of my assignment on a full-time basis to deal solely with the family individual police problems created by alcoholism. It is true that great deals remain to be done, but nothing would have been accomplished had it not been for the determination of Chief Kinsella to save the taxpayers of Stanford the cost of many hours of police work that would have been lost unanticipated because of indirectly scattered handling of the alcoholic aspects affecting the police department of our city.
I will close with saying that this has helped us really give one more proof of the old A.A. adage that the only way to keep what we find in A.A. is by giving it away to others. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. I think that's the most exciting message that Tom had to give us.