Audio
Transcript
Source: 1975 Denver International Convention – 1975 Denver Int, AA with the Courts, Arther M, Judge Kirsch, Charles Smith and David H Part 1 of 2.mp3 File: 1975-denver-international-convention-1975-denver-int-aa-with-the-courts-arther-m-judge-kirsch-charles-smith-and-david-h-part-1-of-2.mp3 Duration: 01:07:58
============================================================
A.A. and the Court, Chairman Arthur Miles, now speaking. And two, I had a speech teacher once who said, Never talk on a subject you don't know anything about. Incidentally, the speech teacher was not a member of A.A., at least at that time. But she did, she did believe in the anonymity tradition. She made me promise never to identify her at the public level as my speech teacher. While I was struggling with the problem of what to say about A.A. and the courts, and getting nowhere, an answer came from my higher power in the form of a very simple statement at the last board meeting.
One of the staff members said, You panel chairmen, stay out of the way of the speakers. And I intend to take that advice. I just want to say something that really has nothing to do with our subject of this panel, but I am your treasurer, and I bring you greetings from your money. And I assure you that it's alive and well and working hard at the General Service Office. I also want to thank you for your contributions and your generosity and support over the last five years that made my job very pleasant.
Our first speaker this morning is the Honorable Nathan S. Kersh. He's a judge of the Municipal Court of Hackensack, New Jersey for the past five years. Judge Kersh is well qualified to speak to us on the subject of A.A. and the courts. In addition to his law degree from New York University, the judge holds a master's degree in psychology from City College in New York City. He also taught at the college level for a short period before moving to the judicial area.
He is a consultant to the Alcoholic Countermeasures Project of the New Jersey State Division of Motor Vehicles, and in that capacity has given lectures and seminars on the problem of the alcoholic and the drunk driving laws of the state of New Jersey. He has recently written and had published A Judge's Guide to Hearing Drunk Driving Cases. Judge Kersh has just been appointed a consultant to the New Jersey Department of Health's Alcoholic Rehabilitation Program.
He is also a director of the Alcoholic Rehabilitation Program of Bergen County's Probation Department, and in that capacity supervises the rehabilitation of alcoholic offenders. In connection with this program, he sponsors, through the court, an A.A. meeting held in the courtroom each Saturday morning. He has also lectured extensively to municipal and county court judges on the responsibilities of the courts toward alcoholics.
It is a pleasure to present a tireless worker in the field of alcoholism and a good friend of A.A., Judge Nathan S. Kersh. Judge Nathan S. Kersh. It's so nice to see all of you here instead of before me as I have usually done in the past. I was very fortunate in having Rex Gamble, Rex, one of your hosts, who drove us from the airport and he told me a story which I'll never forget. He was wearing his badge at a restaurant and the waitress said to him, what is that all about?
And he said, well, it's an A.A. meeting. She said, a bunch of drunks are coming to Denver. And she said, does it really work? And he looked her right in the eye and he said, if it doesn't, Denver will never be the same. My name is Nathan S. Kersh and I'm a municipal court judge in the city of Hackensack, state of New Jersey, and I'm not an alcoholic. I am, however, an honorary member of A.A. Now I know that you know that there's no such animal as an honorary member of A.A.
However, I sponsor, as you just heard, a court referral program that meets once a week, and at the end of the first year, that group gave me the title of honorary member with the stigma, too bad you couldn't make it on your own. Why, now, each year that title is removed, and each year, as I continue to deal with the problem of alcoholism and to deal with A.A. members, I'm convinced, one year I am going to make it on my own.
All right, Hackensack, New Jersey is a typical small city, northeastern, a suburb of New York City.
[00:05:01]
It has a population of about 45,000. It houses the county seat, government buildings. It's essentially a residential and a commercial city with a large shopping area, business, and has its number of entertainment taverns and bars and theaters. And while its population is only 45,000 by census, its actual use is probably 100,000. My topic for today is the responsibility of the court towards the alcoholic.
And that responsibility, which I have been attempting to fulfill during the past four years of our program's existence, was suggested to me by a local A.A. group. In the fall of 1971, my consciousness about the problem of alcoholism was raised in the following manner. At a dinner party, I sat next to an individual I had known for many years as a successful practicing psychologist. I was explaining to him how important it was in a local court dealing with local people who ran afoul of the law by petty offenses for the judge to be more concerned with the offender rather than the offense.
The offense is not that important. Why is he here? That is to treat the offender and tailor the sentencing to best accomplish the ultimate goal of never having to see him again. That was the ultimate goal. However, with the alcoholic offender, he was giving us a lot of trouble. He refused to go away, and he was ever, ever present. Now, our city has its share of low-bottom alcoholics, the typical revolving-door drunk who continually offends our criminal statutes by committing acts of assaults, petty thefts, disturbing passerbys, malicious mischief, and the like.
In one instance, three of them, in a very cold November morning, were found sleeping in the back room of a warehouse whose rear door had been forced open. They had taken three large, empty refrigerator cartons, these big jobs, filled them with and lined them with newspapers. They wrapped themselves in the newspapers, laid the boxes on their side, closed all openings, and went to sleep. A police officer checking the area that early morning discovered these bodies and thought he had uncovered a triple murder, and all hell broke loose.
The policewoman arrived, of course, ambulances, fire engines, and the whole works. These poor three little drunks looked up in amazement. And the police officer, who also protects them in anything, took them into headquarters, and they were charged with breaking and entry and with trespassing. I was describing to my friends at this dinner their appearance before me the next morning. Certainly, the criminal charges could not be sustained, and my problem was what to do for them or with them.
I had the legal right to protect these people by some kind of incarceration or some kind of place to sleep in hell. But I asked my friend, did I have the moral right to take away from these, I called them sick at the time, sick people, their most valuable and perhaps their only remaining possession, their freedom? I was faced with what I felt was a moral dilemma. As a matter of fact, one of the three, a very outspoken alcoholic, which I understand is a disease of alcoholics, informed me that he was an Ivy League and Ivy School graduate.
He objected strenuously to any threat of incarceration, to any action I would take against his freedom, to live and act the way he wanted to. He stated his preference for the kind of existence he led. My office of sympathy and desire to do a good deed were met, don't do me any favors, judge, you take care of your life, I'll take care of mine. My psychologist friend looked at me and said, there's no moral question here, you're attempting to rationalize away your feelings of guilt, your law school ivory tower kind of morality is showing, you are creating a phony moral problem which may help you survive in your job and soothe your conscience, but if you're really concerned, rehabilitate, don't philosophize.
Within a week he called me to his office, to meet some friends, I then learned to my surprise that my psychologist friend and two friends I met with him that day were AL members and they were treating me to what you may call a reverse English 12-step call. One of those present is here in this room today, Margaret R. She was a secretary in the local police department and without whose help, guidance and advice this program that we run for the last four years could never have taken off,
[00:10:02]
never would have been as successful as it is today and I want to thank her publicly. I know she's present in the courtroom today. They proposed a plan for a court-sponsored rehabilitation program which fashioned part of Judge Ray Harrison's Honor Court in New Orleans, Iowa. Would I be interested? I was, I took the bait, hook, line and sinker. I was naive, innocent, I knew nothing much about alcoholism.
This is my fourth year as director of the program and believe me, this is the year I think I'm going to make it on my own. In the past two years our program has grown to the extent that we need and receive financial support from SLEPA, that's the Federal Grant and Aid for Controlled Crime in the Streets. For the coming year, 1975-76, the financial sponsorship is being assumed by the New Jersey State Department of Health on the condition that the program be expanded to 70 neighboring municipalities in northern New Jersey.
Before I discuss how the program works and brag about our success, let me state emphatically, and this is the point and this is why I'm here today, that any court, most particularly the lower court, the local court, the people's court, that court must assume the responsibility for rehabilitating the alcoholic offender. Unless judges recognize this responsibility, an alcohol-dependent offender may be denied a most effective opportunity to stop drinking and to stop violating criminal laws.
Why? First, the family and friends of the alcoholic are almost powerless to offer aid. The reasons are obvious. They have been exposed to all the myths about alcoholics and are subject to all the taboos that are so obstructive in curing the disease. One psychotherapist very aptly decried some of these taboos in the New York Times of January 28, 1975. He described, and I quote, the collusion of silence that surrounds those who are found to be at fault and those who share in the perpetuation of that fault.
Close quote. To label somebody an alcoholic can only be seen as a betrayal of an allegiance to a code that sanctions drinking habits wherein the line between social drinking and a drinking problem becomes obscured. This obstructive collusion of silence, forbidding the betrayal of the code, denying the existence of a friend's or a relative's drinking problem allows the alcoholic to go his way to his own self-destruction.
He is allowed to drive when drunk. If he is a business or a public executive or a co-worker, he is never confronted by his obvious Monday morning condition. And the code prevents the danger that breaking the collusion of silence may force the speaker to face the hazard of self-examination and self-stigma. And both of these happen to me. This program has absolutely ruined my drinking. Now, you don't know how many times I've been called the alcoholic judge simply because of my association with AA.
All right, second, it must be accepted beyond a doubt that alcoholism is a disease. Now, this fact is established as a matter of law and I can substantiate by case after case showing that it's recognized as such. And the fact that it is recognized as a disease and also recognized by the medical profession offers little help to the alcoholic. As a rule, doctors and hospitals are insufficiently trained or prepared to aid the alcoholic.
And generally, they don't want any part of the alcoholic. Medical schools in their manuals advise their doctors to be to avoid the alcoholic as disruptive to their practices, uncontrollable in their offices, and unrewarding in cure. Hospitals instruct their staff to get rid of alcoholics as soon as possible. He must be admitted for treatment. He is rarely admitted as an alcoholic. A favored diagnosis is acute exhaustion.
One of the difficulties doctors face in treating the alcoholic is a difficulty he has in diagnosis. The most prevalent complaints of the alcoholic was either unaware or most likely refuses to recognize his drinking problem are symptoms of anxiety and depression. These symptoms are usually treated with drugs, uppers, and downers. And combined with drinking, the alcoholic's problems are intensified. If you doubt this practice, ask your doctor.
Better yet, ask any member who's been subjected to this kind of treatment. The stories they tell will shock you. So as a family care provider,
[00:15:00]
I encourage you Is of No Help, Then Remains to the Court to Assume the Responsibility, Now, Just for the Simple, I Know You've Heard, You've Been to Enough Meetings, Enough Men Have Told You About the Relationship, The Correlation Between Alcoholism and the Crime Rate, I'll Just Repeat a Few, The Task Force Report on Drunkenness, The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Published in 1967, Substantiates the Following Facts that Every Judge Must Recognize, The FBI Uniform Crime Report of 1964, and it's the same for 1974, Fifty Percent of All Homicides are Alcohol Related, Now, Hackensack has had five homicides this year, for a 45,000 population, that's a lot, all five are Alcohol Related, every one of them, two deaths by automobile drunken driving, with readings of over .19, wife stabbed her husband over a drinking argument, two husbands stabbed their wives, we're keeping score, and the most recent one was a bar room fight, in which one man pulled out a knife, he wanted to put the gun, the gun shot the man with the knife, and the man died, both drunk. Arrests for public drunkenness, driving under the influence, disorderly conduct, vagrancy accounts for 40 to 49 percent of all arrests in any one year. The National Safety Council, as you know, estimates that 50 percent of all vehicular deaths are caused by drunk drivers.
Medical reports estimate that aside from the reported 10 to 15 percent of deaths from cirrhosis of the liver, untold, and more important, unreported deaths, a doctor doesn't put us on the death certificate, deaths that are related from other accidents caused by drunkenness, drownings, suicides, small aircraft crashes, airplanes, in which somebody takes off in his junk, the Marilyn Monroe syndrome, pills and alcohol, suffocation caused by overdoses of alcohol, malnutrition, and freezing. Any criminal court judge will tell you that in 30 to 35 percent of his calendar caseload, some degree of alcoholism is a factor, and recidivism is extremely high among chronic alcoholic offenders. For no other reason then, but to make a judge's job easier, and to reduce his caseload, he must accept the responsibility of directing the alcoholic offender towards rehabilitation. Besides, a judge has tremendous power. He has the power of incarceration. He can send somebody to jail. He has the power of ordering the arm of the court, the probation department, who is responsible to the judge to do his biddings. If he sets down the terms and conditions of control of an alcoholic offender, they must be carried out. He can order psychiatric care. He can order psychotherapy.
He can order hospitals to take care. He has tremendous power. Who else who can treat the alcoholic has as much power as a judge, and he must use that power to help rehabilitate the alcoholic offender. Any judge can set up a program with a minimum of effort and time. Three ingredients are required. A well-organized and supportive AA sponsorship that does most of the work. Rest assured, make that important. Any judge is listening. A sympathetic judge with a selfish motive to make his life easier and his caseload lighter. And, of course, the omnipotent and ever-present alcoholic offender. To organize the program, I met with Margaret Arnn, Kay, and some others, and with members of AA, and convinced them to hold, or they convinced me, I don't even know how it started, to hold an open AA meeting in our courtroom itself once a week, to which I can send referrals. The AA obligation would be to establish, maintain, and run the meeting. That is, supply speakers, plenty of coffee, and sustain itself. The meeting would in no way be different from any other AA open meeting except that court referrals would be present. I also requested that a sponsorship committee be formed to whom I could give specific names for personal follow-up to ensure attendance and availability of transportation to those offenders I referred to the meetings. The AA response was complete sometimes, enthusiastic sometimes, for other reasons which I'll go into later. This meeting is now in its fourth year with an attendance of about 70 to 100 people every Saturday morning. I felt also, as part of this rehabilitation program, now describing the program we run, I needed some pre-trial information on any alcoholic offender.
[00:20:02]
We convinced the chief of police, and he consented, to have every arrest sheet, that is the case history, marked in code by the arresting officer if the officer felt that this defendant committed his criminal act while under the influence or because of alcohol. These arrest sheets were picked up by court personnel, turned over to the AA sponsorship for a pre-trial interview by an AA member. This interviewing AA member would appear at trial with the consent of the defendant and make a report. The pre-trial interview usually took place in the defendant's home, at lunchtime, or in jail. The sponsor would request of the court a possible course of treatment. It was important for me as the judge to know, in the opinion of the AA sponsor, and if he doesn't know, nobody knows, whether or to what degree the defendant had a drinking problem. Now, please keep in mind that we're not concerned here with public drunkenness, which most states and the United States Supreme Court has ruled is no longer a criminal act.
We're talking about defendants who are violated the criminal statute of a state, of a state criminal code. These, the offense they usually committed was subject to a penalty of jail of up to six months or a monetary fine of up to $500. Upon a finding or a plea of guilty, the court, I impose what I have labeled for one of the better term, and I've had a lot of trouble with this term, coercive rehabilitation. But I refuse to give away on it. I will continue to call it coercive rehabilitation, because believe me, I mean it, coercive rehabilitation.
Now, very much, I don't know if you know, but I should give credit to Judge Lyle H. Truax, who, Judge's Guide for Alcohol Offenders, appeared in 1973, two years after our program started, and if you, it was published by the National Council on Alcoholism, and I concur and he concurs in everything he says, and he's doing a fabulous job, and I'm glad he published this book. I'm sure you've seen it. You can get a copy of it from the National Council on Alcoholism. Now, I said the power of the court is great. Let me draw a schematic scheme of how our program works. I am the judge. I'm aware of the problem of alcoholism.
I have a probation officer who must obey my terms and orders. Under him, the judge, the probation officer, he will order the attendance at AA. AA will receive him. He will order attendance at a psychotherapist. Psychotherapists will receive him. The AA people will work with the probation officer to get the family involved in Al-Anon. Now we have a hold on this offender. I very strongly believe that alcoholics must want to help himself, that an alcoholic must want to help himself to be cured. AA states he must first reach his bottom to achieve that desire. The court's coercive force must be recognized then as first a catalytic agent that speeds up the process of rehabilitation, which may save years for the alcoholic, and second is the bottom itself, jail, loss of job, loss of family, public disgrace, loss of freedom. Do you want to be helped, the defendant is asked. Believe me, no defendant ever says no, and the man is wearing his black nightgown in front of him and he's giving orders. The judge knows full well that the defendant's greatest fear at this point is not incarceration, because he doesn't believe he's going to do that, but deprivation of his next drink. And yes, says the defendant, believing full well that he's going to beat this rap as he's beat all the others. A jail sentence is imposed, suspended, and the defendant's placed on probation for a period of one to two years, subject to strict mandatory terms and conditions. These mandatory conditions are tailored to the individual, and we stress two points. Identification of the problem. Identification telling the defendant it wasn't your arrest on this malicious mischief throwing a rock through the window that caused you to lose your job, it was because you had a confrontation with the bottle. It's the opening of the bottle that caused you. You didn't lose your job because your license was taken away because you had a small accident while you were drunk, it was because you were drunk, you had to have the drink before you drove. And the second part besides identification is to restructure the alcoholic's life. Now this is a very difficult process and I'll describe it later. The defendant was assured that violation of this strictly supervised probation will result in the jail term that was suspended, and I make sure he knows that this is not an idle threat. The key force here is control, supervision, and
[00:25:05]
AA exposure. To illustrate, I spoke earlier of this Ivy School graduate, the vocal alcoholic, who protested being incarcerated when found sleeping in his refrigerator box. To see if this system could work, I decided to concentrate on his rehabilitation when he was next arrested. Remember, he was one of our revolving door drunks. In the spring of 72, he was picked up on a malicious mischief charge and convicted. He has a typical low-bottom alcohol case history.
At one, he was sent as an inpatient to the county hospital alcoholic ward for a detox period and for psychotherapy. He stayed there for four weeks. He had been an officer in the army during the Korean War and he had a wife and children, whereabouts unknown. On discovering his veteran status, application was immediately made to a veteran's hospital that had an alcoholic rehabilitation center. It took us six months until we got him there, and in these six months, in the meantime, we sent him from inpatient hospital to halfway houses, to an AA sponsor's house, to care of AA members. He was never let out of anybody's control for this six-month time. I must tell you that our first real attempt at rehabilitation was a success. Mr. Ivy Lee graduate, good man, is now a psychiatric nurse, male nurse, at the veteran's hospital, and a member of AA and doing good 12-step work. We saved this man's life, and that gave us a great deal of encouragement.
The court attempts to limit introducing members into the program only to those who appear to have a chronic or acute problem. For those who have starting or prodromal problems, we have a seminar, a four-week seminar, that's very much like the V.D. films about alcoholism that we give to them for a period of four weeks, and we feel that's enough. In the early stages of the program, I learned that perhaps the most illuminating definition of the term alcoholic, people always ask me, what is an alcoholic? I've long decided not to be concerned with the definition of alcoholic for the following reason. I learned from a man, perhaps, who had more experience in the matter, in the subject, than any I've met since, or then or since.
He appeared before me as a defendant with a long history of alcoholic offenses. He was partially detoxified, and we had a dialogue that went something like this. Judge, you, my friend, have a drinking problem. Defendant, no, your honor. I have no drinking problem. I can drink as much as you can give me. Do you recognize the fact that you may be an alcoholic? No, judge, I'm not an alcoholic, but I can tell you what an alcoholic is. An alcoholic is anybody who drinks more than I do. That convinced me not to look for definitions.
I've read enough and practiced enough and met enough alcoholics to know that any cure must contain four elements. First, identification of the problem, as I discussed before, by both the judge and the defendant, by the probation officer and the defendant, by the psychotherapist and the defendant, by the family and the defendant, by the defendant himself. Somehow the offender must be shown that his offense is alcohol-based, just as Dr. Jekyll's and Mr. Hyde's offenses were chemical formula-based. To this day, I believe that Robert Louis Stevenson mixed 100 proof vodka with Whipple wine to turn Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde. They tell me that'll do it. Whatever it was, I'm sure that the chemical formula Dr. Jekyll took was highly alcohol. The attitude of denial, denial, denial of the recognition of the problem must be broken down. A period of detoxification is then required. It is impossible to reach a tanked-up offender until his brain is clear from the effect of alcohol. Detoxification can be inpatient or outpatient, but you must have some control over detoxifying him. Combined with detoxification must be exposure to AA treatment to allow the alcoholic to do some soul-searching and self-examination. In answer to that, I request that all of you who feel that way recall the number of times at AA meetings you have heard a speaker tell the following story.
[00:30:24]
of AA. I offer the alcoholic an artificial bottom and afford him the opportunity to make a self-determination of whether he has a problem and to seek to restructure his life. As to the members of the general public, the bar, their objections can be easily overcome. Their problem is mostly if they too are controlled by the horrible taboos I spoke of earlier, the collusion of silence, the fear of the betrayal of a code, that drinking is manly, that drinking is necessary, that drinking is, the failure or lack of being able to drink is even worse than being impotent.
All right, to, just to give you an example, we had a case in court of a drunk driver, a woman who was 34 years old, she weighed about 115 pounds, 10.30 one morning with her two children, a three-year-old and a five-year-old in the backseat of the car, was cruising along, she went through the closed stanchion of a railroad crossing and just three feet short of the oncoming train, her car, by grace of God, stopped and didn't kill them all. When the police arrived, she was obviously drunk. They put her on the breathalyzer, she had a reading of 0.23, which is really drunk for 115 years at 10.30 in the morning.
She unquestionably had a drinking problem. Her attorney entered a plea of guilting. I asked if she wanted to be helped. Yes, she said. I imposed a mandatory revocation and said I'm going to give you 60 days in the county jail and suspend it and place you into our program, part of which you must attend AA. When she got home that night, her husband learned of the AA part of the sentence and he said no SOB of a judge is going to tell me that my wife is an alcoholic by sending her to AA. The appellate judge on appeal agreed with the husband. He said that putting the stigma of AA upon anybody for being drunk is cruel and inhuman punishment.
I decided to ignore his ruling. I've never followed it and the man is a fool. I volunteered to talk to you today as I have volunteered to speak to many legal groups and judges associations for the express purpose of making these objectors realize the value and the miracle of AA. It perhaps is the only real cure for the alcoholic today. My message to you then in conclusion is twofold. As AA members, I feel it is one of your responsibilities to make a reverse 12-step call on your local judge to convince him to accept his responsibility to the alcoholic offender.
Even if he goes so far as to make part of his probation term ordered attendance at AA, he will allow the alcoholic to be exposed to its benefits and he may be alleviating and curtailing long years of an alcoholic's misery. In turn, cooperate with your local judge. Offer him a referral group to which he can send alcoholic offenders. Recognize these offenders when they appear. Cooperate with the court even if it requires discussing with the judge as a friend of the court those matters that are in the best interest of the alcoholic offender who attends your meeting. I know this may violate some of the traditions of AA, but the end certainly justifies this violation.
Finally, continue to multiply, prosper, and help. Thank you. Thank you, Judge. What this country needs is more enlightened judges like Judge Curtis. Our next speaker is Charles Z. Smith. He's an Associate Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Washington in Seattle. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Temple University in Philadelphia and the Juris Doctor degree from the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle.
He is also a graduate of the Naval Justice School and holds a rank of major in the Marine Corps Reserve Judge Advocate Division. Besides his duties at the University of Washington School of Law, Mr. Smith is a news commentator for station KOMO Radio and KOMO Television, the American broadcasting affiliate in Seattle. Perhaps he'll bring us up to date on the latest news. Prior to entering the academic world, Mr. Smith completed service as a judge of the Superior Court of Washington for King County. He also served as a judge in the Municipal Court, the Juvenile Court, and also as a general trial judge.
[00:35:13]
From 1961 to 1964, he served as a special assistant to the then Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the United States Department of Justice. Charles Smith is a member of the Advisory Board of the Central Area Community Alcoholism Center in Seattle. He has also served on the King County Commission on Alcoholism and the Seattle-King County Council on Alcoholism. At the University of Washington, he is on the Advisory Board of the Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Institute. It is a real joy to have Charles Smith with us today.
May I suggest that those of you who are sitting on hard seats merely stand and take a quick stretch. May I suggest that those of you who are sitting on hard seats merely stand and take a quick stretch. May I suggest that those of you who are sitting on hard seats merely stand and take a quick stretch. I suppose following the formality of introductions, I would say that I'm Charlie Smith. I'm not an alcoholic, though on the coattails of AA, I am sometimes known as Charlie S.
One of my Seattle-area residents has reminded me that I'm an honorary member of the Mercer Island Chapter of AA. Maybe you would be interested in knowing how that came about. A few years ago when I wore the righteous black robe of a judge, I had the privilege by invitation of attending the first birthday party of a friend who was a member of the Mercer Island AA Chapter. I was loath to be identified as a judge because judges can have a chilling effect upon a gathering such as AA, and I asked the chairperson who is here smiling at me this morning merely to identify me as Charlie S.
I was introduced around the table, and then I had the privilege of hearing the typical AA testimony. There was a gentleman next to me who decided to use his opportunity to help me. So he looked at me with a pleasant smile on his face and said, Charlie S., if you've got a problem with booze, you have come to the right place. The chairperson then smiled and said, does he have a problem with booze? He faces it at least 200 times a day, making reference to the 200 persons who would appear before me then in the municipal court.
This gentleman was even more determined that he was going to help me. He said, you've come to the right place, we love you, we want you here, and we want you to come back. After the meeting was over, in my best naivete, I went up to him and said, but I don't have a problem with booze. Then he looked at me and said, that's what all drunks say.
[00:40:06]
And my chairperson, who then felt sorry for me, rescued me, identified me, and the chilling effect occurred. Partly because of that, I was invited back to a public meeting of the Mercer Island Club. And to my pleasant surprise, I was given the status, though probably not recognized by the national organization, of honorary membership in the Mercer Island Chapter. Thus arises my formal identification as Charlie S.
And incidentally, as a parenthetical announcement, those of us who are here righteously holding forth this morning will be available on an individual basis during the remainder of today and perhaps also the remainder of the meeting, I have to return to Seattle tomorrow afternoon, for individual private discussions about matters within our cognizance. I like to think that I have a lot to offer, but one of my sons, who is now 17 years of age, who at the age of nine manifested some tendencies towards genius, he said to me one day, I like you, Dad.
You're bright, you speak a lot, you speak on a lot of subjects, and everybody likes to hear you talk. And this was during a time when I was in the juvenile court and I had learned that fathers had lost touch with their sons. And I was so impressed with that that I offered him a chance to go with me on a trip somewhere I had to go, where I was going to be in a luxury motel with a swimming pool. And even at the expense of not inviting his other two brothers and his sister, I took him along because I recognized that I had doubtless been responsible for producing one of the nation's geniuses.
As we were driving down the freeway, I was very tired and I needed some encouragement, so I said to my son, Mike, say buddy, what was that you said about your old dad? And he was programmed for it. He was then and is now a con person. He repeated it in almost the precise language, I like you, you're bright, people like to hear you talk, and you speak on so many different subjects. And then I felt good all over again, but then I felt some tension in the air.
And my nine-year-old Michael, as I should have known, had something else to say. And he said, but you and I know you don't always know what you're talking about. I sometimes feel a bit of regret that I am not able to say I am an alcoholic. But one of my friends who is an alcoholic has reassured me that I would have made a really outstanding alcoholic. I like chocolate, I drink coffee, and I have a tendency to talk a lot.
So I appear here today then with this history of identification, and I hope that you will not find what my son Michael has learned, that I don't always know what I'm talking about. I think it's especially significant that the 40th anniversary of Alcoholics Anonymous is being held in the city of Denver. For the reason that, and particularly with reference to this subject, the role of AA and the courts, the city of Denver has produced two outstanding judges who, like Judge Kirsch from New Jersey and like Judge Lyle Truax from the state of Washington, have been in the forefront of promoting new awareness of the alcoholic in the court.
Judge William Burnett of the Denver District Court and Judge Samuel Kerbins of the Denver District Court have both written and spoken throughout the United States and have been lecturers at the National College of the State Judiciary at the University of Nevada in Reno, helping to educate judges. In Reno, helping to educate judges on their responsibility to have a new awareness of the phenomenon of alcoholism as it comes before the court.
[00:45:06]
Like most persons who are not with the experience of alcoholism, at least to my cognizance, I first became aware of Alcoholics Anonymous through a motion picture, Ray Milan's old movie, The Lost Weekend. I don't know how authentic that picture is or was, but at least it gave me an awareness of the help that Alcoholics Anonymous can give to persons who are coping or trying to cope with the problem of alcoholism.
Unfortunately, though, The Lost Weekend did not fully equip me to understand alcoholism, but at least I was aware that there was such a thing and I was aware that there was such an organization as Alcoholics Anonymous. I think it was probably predestined that I would subsequently become significantly aware of alcoholism as a force in our society and would become more aware of the function of AA in helping us as members of society to better deal with this phenomenon, which for many years had been hidden under the rug, hidden behind the closet, only whispered about in public places and very rarely acknowledged by persons in the, quote, polite segment of society, unquote.
In January 1965, I became a judge of the Municipal Criminal Court of the City of Seattle. Seattle is a metropolitan city of now about 570,000 people. In 1965, our census was 558,000 in a metropolitan county area of about a million and a half persons. And in 1965, the caseload of the Seattle Municipal Court, by statistical determination, was 16,828. All of which were calendared before the then single Municipal Criminal Court judge in the City of Seattle.
Of this number, 11,534 were for the offense of public intoxication, involving approximately 3,500 people who, by anybody's definition, would be considered an alcoholic or at least a problem drinker. Unfortunately for the community, we were led to believe in 1965 that the only alcoholics in the City of Seattle were those who resided in our Pioneer Square area, sometimes referred to as our Skid Road, R-O-A-D area, which is to be distinguished, incidentally, from the eastern reference to Skid Row, R-O-W.
And we claim in Seattle that we are the originators of the reference to the down and out alcoholic as the Skid Road alcoholic because they inhabit an area that was used in Seattle to skid logs down the hill in the pioneer days of Seattle. But in 1965, in the City of Seattle, we believed, and this was a popular misconception, that there were 3,500 alcoholics in the City of Seattle, that they all resided on the Skid Road, and they all came before the municipal criminal court charged with the offense of public intoxication.
In the same year, according to FBI statistics, there were 1,535,040 arrests for public drunkenness in the United States, most of which came before courts like the Seattle Municipal Court in 1965 charged with the offense of public intoxication. The persons who did come before the court then had reached the bottom of the ladder of socialization, and they represented a cross-section of the population generally not known to the average, quote, polite member, close quote, of our society.
One of the reasons that in the municipal courts we got a larger proportion of Skid Road alcoholics was that those persons who did not reside on Skid Road were able, because of physical
[00:50:03]
appearance, residence, or other accoutrements of upper-class existence, to avoid the stigma of arrest, to avoid the stigma of appearance before municipal courts, and generally were placed in taxi cabs by sympathetic and fine police officers, we having one of the finest police agencies in the United States. And it was only the offensive, gutter-rolling alcoholics who found themselves in the main coming before the municipal court.
This was good for the ego of the city of Seattle, because we were then able to deny that we had a problem of alcoholism in the city of Seattle. But in 1965, through an unusual circumstance, the city of Seattle suddenly became aware of the fact that we did have alcoholics in the city of Seattle who were not counted among the Skid Road alcoholics who came before the municipal court. And it occurred by reason of the fact that with the number of AA persons, I appeared before a state senate committee advocating a better allocation of state resources for the care and treatment of alcoholics.
And in the process, I made reference to the then-pending DeWitt Easter case in the District of Columbia, and suggested to the state senate that we needed to be prepared for the inevitable, because the trend was towards a judicial determination that it is unconstitutional to jail an alcoholic merely for manifesting his or her illness in a public place, and that therefore we must be prepared in the state of Washington for providing adequate treatment resources for the approximately 36,000 alcoholics who were already existing in the city of Seattle.
A very fine newspaper writer, otherwise competent, was carried away by this remark, wrote an article in one of our daily papers which appeared on the front page. And the force of that article was essentially to this effect. Judge Smith last night guaranteed to the state senate that the United States Supreme Court would make it unconstitutional to jail alcoholics, and 36,000 alcoholics will be running loose on the streets of Seattle.
This of course was entirely inept, entirely inaccurate, but I think if there was ever a dramatic event in the city of Seattle that started us thinking about the problem of alcoholism, it was that. In 1975, we can now say that intoxication is no longer a crime in Seattle, nor in the state of Washington, due to legislative action, not due to court decisions. It is not condescending or gratuitous to suggest that this result has been achieved very largely through the active participation of members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I went into my files in preparation for this appearance and reviewed a short speech I made in 1966 in the city of Seattle before the Pacific Northwest Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I was reminded then that I was the only public official in the area who appeared, due in part, I suspect, to a strange fear on the part of other public officials, including the mayor of the city of Seattle, that there was something demeaning or improper about a public official subject to public vote appearing before, quote, a group of alcoholics.
A young news person, a young woman television reporter, a friend of mine, called me excitedly and wanted to interview me for television. I welcomed her there, and she asked me questions essentially to this effect. How do those alcoholics have the nerve to have a convention and in the city of Seattle yet?
[00:55:04]
I explained to her that nice people like judges and television news persons could be alcoholics, and that those people who were in attendance at that convention in the Olympic Hotel in Seattle were nice people like the rest of us, and that, as a matter of fact, the only difference between the AA convention in the Olympic Hotel and any other convention of American persons was that there would not be a lot of drinking of alcoholic beverages, and there wouldn't be a lot of conventioneers running around the hotel and the city making fools of themselves.
I'm not sure that she ever used that interview, and she is now associated with the station which I am associated, and I am tempted now, upon returning to Seattle, to ask her what she ever did with that interview in 1966. I was on the municipal court, and I apologize for going back this far, because I am now a senior citizen, and I am dealing now in reflected experiences. It was my frustration to encounter the problem of alcoholism with all its force, and it was my privilege to call upon AA resources.
I think particularly of the first AA person I called upon was a Seattle phenomenon commonly known as Big Pete, and when I would run into a problem, I would get on the telephone directly or indirectly, get hold of Big Pete from the big hall, who would come running and give us some help. I think that the role of AA, however, has been more formal than merely the casual referral of court persons to AA, and I agree with Judge Kirsch that the phenomenon of coercive rehabilitation is absolutely essential.
As long as the courts encounter the problem of alcoholism, not solely with reference to public intoxication, not any longer a crime in my state, but with reference to all other matters coming before the court, you name the criminal offense, the chances are, as statistically it has been pointed out, 50%, there is a problem of alcoholism, or at least a drinking problem, somewhere in the background, and the judge has a responsibility in making a proper disposition of a case to investigate the entire environment of the defendant who comes before the court, and the judge has the responsibility to make some direction towards rehabilitation.
I have consulted with my friends in AA about this. There are some AA groups that do not prefer that judges direct AA participation as part of a probationary sentence. There are some who recognize, on the other hand, that few people go to AA without some coercion from a husband or a wife, a mother or a father, a sister or a brother, a friend or an employer, and why not then also direct the person to have a relationship with AA by the authority vested in a court?
This has been done with great success in the city of Seattle. The Seattle Municipal Court, as early as 1965, in the early days of our awareness of alcoholism, recognized, on the other hand, that few people go to AA without some coercion from a husband or a wife, a mother or a father, a sister or a brother, a friend or an employer, and why not then also direct the person to have a relationship with AA by the authority vested in a court?
This has been done with great success in the city of Seattle.
[01:00:14]
The program was begun by Frank S., a member of AA, also a member of the staff of the Seattle-King County Health Department, who structured this program as a convenience to the court, and it then developed into a successful program which later became the Alcoholism Information School of the Municipal Court. Our Municipal Court has expanded. We no longer leave the responsibility to one judge. There are now four judges in the group who deal with problems relating to alcoholism, and judges do refer persons in driving cases as well as non-driving cases to the Seattle Municipal Court Alcoholism Information School.
When Frank S. died, the program was taken over by George G., another member of Alcoholics Anonymous, who successfully carried the program through until he retired just a few months ago. And since February 1975, the Seattle Municipal Court Alcoholism Information School has been conducted by Robert T., a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, who, with Ron F., another member of Alcoholics Anonymous, implemented and carried forward the Cedar Hills Alcoholism Treatment Center, funded by King County, for court referrals of persons with drinking problems, mostly alcoholics, which has been in operation now since 1967 and which is regarded throughout the United States as an ideal court-directed program for the rehabilitation of alcoholics.
The Cedar Hills Treatment Facility is AA-oriented. The Seattle Municipal Court Information School is AA-oriented. And now in the city of Seattle, from the early beginning when we had no government-sponsored programs and only a few private programs and only a handful of AA chapters, we now are able to say in the city of Seattle that we have numerous private agencies, partly funded from public funds, in some instances funded solely from private funds.
We have 141 chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous operating in the city of Seattle and its general area. And we have rehabilitation programs for men, rehabilitation programs for women. And we're able to say now that the Seattle Municipal Court Information School, Alcohol Information School, services at least 2,500 persons each year who are referred to the program from the various levels of our courts. And without the active participation, the decisive information provided by, and the accessibility of referrals to Alcoholics Anonymous, the Seattle Municipal Court program, now recognized throughout the United States as one of the better ones, could not work.
It is my opinion that taking all things into consideration, that the city of Seattle represents in a sense a laboratory of experience. In the short period of ten years, from an area which pretended alcoholism did not exist except on the skid road, we now have, under the general sponsorship of the Washington State Department of Health, the Seattle-King County Department of Health, and the Municipality of King County, and the Municipality of the City of Seattle, an umbrella agency called the King County Division of Alcoholism Services, which is headed by Chuck Kay, a member of AA, which acts as an umbrella to coordinate the functioning of most of the public and private community alcoholism agencies in the Seattle-King County area.
Originally financed entirely by Central Alcoholism Agency funds, a federal funding source, its 1976 budget now is $3,400,000, with $1,900,000 from the State of Washington, $700,000 from a federal staffing grant, $500,000 from King County, $150,000 from the City of Seattle,
[01:05:16]
and the balance from incorporated cities in the metropolitan area of King County. With a King County population now of approximately 1,800,000, including the City of Seattle, the King County Division of Alcoholism in 1974, through its affiliate agencies, provided services for 4,551 persons. Of this group, 21% were referred from traffic courts in the county, 22% from other courts, for a total of 43%.
Of the total number of clients referred to the agency, 49% were referred directly to Alcoholics Anonymous, and 17% additional were referred to Alcoholics Anonymous at the completion of the Alcoholism Information School and other outpatient programs. One of the persons who is most active in these programs is Patricia S., a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, who is Community Services Coordinator for the King County Division of Alcoholism Services, who is the staff person responsible for liaison between the agency and the courts.
Patricia S. has assured me that she firmly believes in benevolent coercion and that she now is in process of developing a formalized program of referral to the juvenile courts in our state with jurisdiction of persons under the age of 18, using the resources of Al-Anon and Al-Ateen, the resources of AA, and providing AA foster parents for children in the juvenile court who have a problem of alcoholism.
In the final analysis, we have to conclude that there is a role for Alcoholics Anonymous in a relationship with the court, because based upon my experience and my observation, and based upon our experience in the city of Seattle, we could not have done what I think we have done without AA. Thank you very much. Thank you, Charles. Our two honorary AAs, Charlie S. and Judge K., as you can tell from their speeches, the honorary designation was well placed.