Kryminogenność alkoholizmu
Authors: Andrzej Mazur  
Published: July 2024

The sample consisted of 718 men diagnosed as alcoholics and subjected to disaccustoming treatment at a mental hospital in Łódź in the years 1971-1975. They constituted over 98 per cent of hospital patients in that period, and over 87 per cent of them were sent to hospital treatment by the court. During the treatment on the disaccustoming ward, which lasted about three months on the average, extensive biographical material about each of the patients was gathered. In 1985, a follow-up examination was carried out with the aim to estimate the effects of treatment. All of the men were found to have relapsed into alcoholism at different times, mostly during several weeks after discharge. The examined sample included 429 men (59.7 per cent) with criminal records; in the case of 396 of them (92.3 per cent), their first conviction was preceded by the average of eight years of excessive drinking (from one to twenty-six years). Thus the men in the sample infringed the law at a much older age as compared with the total male population in Poland in the discussed period. The material presented in this paper concerns the role of alcoholism as an individual person’s illness rather than the role of alcohol as a crimegenerating factor. As shown by an analysis of a number of comparative data, biographies of the sample from before the emergence of the alcohol problem reflected the phenomena and processes taking place in the country. This concerns in particular migration to towns, advancement of the succeeding generations, the level of professional qualifications at the peak of economic activity, and the level of education. Also as regards behaviour, the men in the sample probably had not differed, before being subjected to disaccustoming treatment, from typical male representatives of excessively drinking circles, and particularly from alcoholics. The study included a comparison of the sample’s criminal records with the records of men in Poland in the years 1954-1985: the proportion of persons with criminal records among alcoholics proved nearly twice higher. Still more drastic differences were revealed by means of comparison of the incidence of the separate penalties and the numbers of convictions: penalties not involving deprivation of liberty were imposed over twice less frequently upon alcoholics, who instead were conicvted to over two years of imprisonment 4.5 time more often. Finally, the proportion of alcoholics convicted only once was twice lower, and of those convicted at least six times – 3.3 times higher than in the total population of convicted persons. This accumulation of multiplicities made it possible to estimate the threat of alcoholics’criminal acts at five to six times the index for the total male population. Further comparisons, this time concerning the types of offences committed, led to distinguishment of two such types which are typical of alcoholics: namely, offences against family, guardianship, and young persons, and those against private property. The number of convictions of alcoholics for offences against family was three times larger, and for those against private property – 1.3 larger; instead, convictions for offences against life and health, honour and bodily inviolobility, and public property were as frequent among alcoholics as in the total male population, and the number of alcoholics convicted for all of the remaining types of offences was 2.5 times smaller. An attempt was also made to identify the dominant crimegenerating factors in life histories of the men in the sample which provided a rich documentary evidence. Seven such factors were distinguished. Next, a matrix was constructed of their coincidence in pairs, and five factors were determined which are most strongly related to crime. The were: 1) excessive drinking under 19; 2) lack of permanent employment for at least 40 per cent of the time since leaving school; 3) an interval of at least one year from ending or leaving school till the first job; 4) lack of professional qualifications both of the examined man and of his father. Obviously, the latter factor results from chance and escapes any preventive activities. The remaining three, instead, concern the sphere of behaviour which may be subjected to appropriate preventive treatment, chiefly in the case of young persons threatened with alkoholism who still have no criminal record and maintained by their famikies despite having finished or left school, Since a long time, category of young persons living in a specific subculture has been pointed to as a crimegenerating group. Those, instead, who regularly evade permanent work and confine themselves to odd jobs, unlicensed trade, or simply sponge on their families, require an entirely different preventive treatment.