Report of the Charity Organisation Committee on the organisation of the courts by which drunkenness is punished, in connexion with suggested extension of the Justices' Clerks Act, 1877, to Ireland

Abstract

In investigating the causes of distress, drunkenness appears at once to be one of the chief causes. It is also intimately connected with the prevalence of vice, as it weakens the checks against immorality. So again, the distress and low moral tone that spring from drunkenness are prolific sources of crime. The first matter to investigate is, whether the existing punishments in Ireland for drunkenness, and for the assaults and violence it gives rise to, are in a satisfactory state. Upon this point Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Chief Secretary for Ireland, when introducing the Prisons Bill on the 9th of February in the present year, states: ?As to the sentences of forty-eight hours for drunkenness, he believed they did much more harm than good. Anybody who had taken notice of the judicial statistics of Ireland, would have noticed with regret the terrible increase of the offences of drunkenness in that country. He was bound to say that this state of things was owing to the mistaken leniency of the magistrates and infinitesimal fines, and the absurdly short and unsatisfactory terms of imprisonment that were imposed?.