Intoxication and violence: a cultural perspective

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Intoxication and violence a cultural perspective

• Robin Room
• robin.room_at_sorad.su.se
• Regulation of lifestyles course
• Sociology, University of Helsinki
• 21 September 2004

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Intoxication ? violence?

• There is a strong association between alcohol
  consumption and criminal violence
• What is the causal significance of this?
• Arguments against interpreting as cause
• cause should be reserved for human agency
• cause should only be used when relation is both
  necessary and sufficient
• only when there is a main effect through
  phrmacology

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Intoxication ? violence? (continued)

• But public opinion
• 87 agree A lot of the violence in society
  could be eliminated if people didnt get drunk
  (Ontario, CA)
• 45 agree Anyone might become violent if they
  drink too much (Finland)
• In between Epidemiological definitions of
  causation
• The relation need not be necessary, need not be
  sufficient probability rather than
  all-or-nothing
• Conditional causation in combination with other
  factors
• Relationship may operate through cultural beliefs
  about intoxication or the circumstances of
  drinking

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Expectations about intoxication cognition,
intention, control, action (Ontario, CA 1998)
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Differences in drinking patterns in western Europe

• Frequency of drinking greater in southern Europe
• Per-capita consumption converging
• What about binge drinking?
• Problematic term, but increasingly established
• Defined in ECAS survey a bottle or wine or
  equivalent about 70 gm. ethanol
• Binge drinking vs. Intoxication?

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Drinking by male adults
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Drinking by female adults
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Patterns in binge drinking

• Males gt females in each country on
• Number of drinking occasions
• Number of binge drinking occasions
• Rate of binges per 100 drinking occasions than
  females in each country
• Drinking most frequent in Italy, France, UK
• France, Italy, Germany have fewest binges/100
  occasions
• Highest number of binges in UK, Ireland, Italy
• Same patterns by culture for men and for women

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Besides the amount of drinking on the occasion ...

• Drunken comportment (MacAndrew and Edgerton)
• The Nordic dream of a better society (Olsson)
  
• Wet vs. Dry sociesties
• wet society drinking integrated in everyday
  life, consumed by families at meals, behavioural
  norms while drinking should be the same as when
  sober
• dry society drinking sporadic and often to
  intoxication, separated from daily life,
  ostensive drunken behaviour
• An attempt to test in western Europe

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Hypothesis 1 behaviour while drinking is
controlled in southern Europe, ostensive in
northern
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Hypothesis 2 the limits for within limits
behaviour are stricter in southern Europe
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Hypothesis 3 expectation of violence from
drinking greater in northern Europe
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Hypothesis 3 expectation of violence from
drinking greater in northern Europe (continued)
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Hypothesis 4 intoxication more of an excuse in
northern Europe
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The score-card pretty bad

• Hypothesis 1 behaviour while drinking is
  controlled in southern Europe, ostensive in
  northern
• No clear difference
• Hypothesis 2 the limits for within limits
  behaviour are stricter in southern Europe
• No clear difference latitude greatest in middle
  Europe
• Hypothesis 3 expectation of violence from
  drinking greater in northern Europe
• Opposite patterns actually greater in southern
  Europe
• Hypothesis 4 intoxication more of an excuse in
  northern Europe
• No clear difference Italy ?, France ? on excuse
  value of intoxication

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Pondering where we stand

• other expectancy studies also give unexpected
  results
• problems with the dry/wet dichotomy
• combining too many dimensions historical,
  drinking patterns, drunken comportment
• what happens beyond Europe?
• dry cultures as culturally constructing the
  link between alcohol and violence, or
• wet cultures as suppressing the link?
• reflexivity about intoxication and violence
  attitudes are expressed in the presence of
  cultural construction of knowledge

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The problem of responsibility for the foreseeable

• If intoxication is known to cause violence,
  people should be forewarned
• A major agenda of temperance education
• If forewarned, one should not become intoxicated
• But if one becomes intoxicated anyway, is it an
  excuse?

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The within limits clause and culturally
acceptable excuses

• Is there a single set of norms for intoxicated
  behaviour, or is there a gradient, or
  situationally-specific norms?
• Judges decisions in British common law
  jurisdictions
• Intoxication allowed precisely when the behaviour
  is outside any conceivable rational limit
• Daviault case in Canada 72-year-old man sexually
  assaulting a 65-year-old woman confined to a
  wheelchair
• Behaviour akin to automatism intoxication as
  possession?
• The post-enlightenment fascination with the
  automaton, with actions outside conscious control
• Alcohol as a secularized spirit which can
  possess? (Demon Rum)
• A gradient of expectancies about comportment, but
  also extreme drunkenness as an accepted account
  of behaviour outside any expectations?

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At the official level, no excuse Canadian
legislation, 1995

• Whereas the Parliament of Canada shares with
  Canadians the moral view that people who, while
  in a state of self-induced intoxication, violate
  the physical integrity of others are blameworthy
  in relation to their harmful conduct and should
  be held criminally accountable for it ...
• It is not a defence to an assault or any other
  interference or threat of interference by a
  person with the bodily integrity of another
  person that the accused, by reason of
  self-induced intoxication, lacked the general
  intent or the voluntariness required to commit
  the offence, where the accused departed markedly
  from the following standard of care ...
• A person departs markedly from the standard of
  reasonable care generally recognized in Canadian
  society and is thereby criminally at fault where
  the person, while in a state of self-induced
  intoxication that renders a person unaware of, or
  incapable of consciously controlling, their
  behaviour, voluntarily or involuntarily
  interferes or threatens to interfere with the
  bodily integrity of another person.

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On the record public opinion alcohol causes
violence, a drunk person cant tell right from
wrong ... (Ontario, 1995)
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but the expectancies are mainly not all --
about effects on someone else (Ontario, 1992)

• How likely would it be that having a few drinks
  (enough to feel the effects) on an occasion/every
  day would ... make you/someone else aggressive
  and possible violent? (somewhat and very likely)
• Effects on someone else
• 83 for a few drinks on an occasion
• 91 for a few drinks every day
• Effects on self
• 12 for a few drinks on an occasion
• 41 for a few drinks every day

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However, a drunken person is still responsible
no excuse (Ontario 1998)

• If someone is drunk, they are still responsible
  for their actions
• Strongly agree 85 somewhat agree 12
• Only 3 disagree
• If someone is very drunk when they commit a crime
  so drunk that theyt are slurring their words
  should they receive more or less punishment
  than someone who is sober and commits the same
  crime?
• 16 more punishment
• 81 same punishment
• 3 less punishment

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Why a drunk person is responsible (open ended
responses, Ontario)
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But at an informal level, the excuse value is
still there
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... although it is usually not a very good excuse
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Although its usually not a very good excuse
(continued)
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How to deal with intoxication remains in many
places a problem in law

• The triangle the judges dilemma
• Guilt requires a guilty mind
• Intoxication removes the ability to make moral
  choices (i.e., to have a guilty mind)
• But allowing an intoxication defense opens the
  floodgates

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At the level of international law The Rome
Statute establishing the International Criminal
Court, 1998
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Can drunken comportment in a culture be changed?

• not readily
• cases cited by MacAndrew Edgerton
• Papago in Arizona
• Tahitian islands
• Bantu in South Africa
• all cultures which underwent a major social
  transition, including subordination to a dominant
  European culture
• expectancy challenges literature
• efforts to challenge and thus change
  expectancies of university students not very
  successful
• (Jones et al., Addiction 9657-72, 2001)
• changes in behaviour around drinking-driving as a
  model?
• A sustained campaign would pull against the
  cultural utilities of drinking as time out

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Where to look further?
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Where to look further? (continued)