NCJ Number
94375
Date Published
1983
Length
30 pages
Annotation
This research supports the view that urban renewal activities and the related identification and labeling of problems -- in the case, public drunkenness -- is the product of conflict between business interests and the socially marginal, who traditionally use the inner city areas.
Abstract
In the case of Fresno, California, the threat of downtown mall or redevelopment failure contributed to pressure to place blame and take some action. Business interests attributed sluggish development of the mall partly to public drunkenness in the mall area, driving away potential shoppers. The business interests successfully influenced public officials to concur with their analysis of the problem and to cooperate in taking some action. The alcohol rubric was a means of blaming mall problems on deviant and marginal populations, permitting the joint application of crime-oriented and treatment-oriented solutions to deal with conditions that were more a result of urban structure than individual behavior. The Governor and State legislature also participated in attributing threats of failure to the city's weakest and most marginal groups. The new law, which provides punitive sanctions for recidivist public drunkenness, has failed largely because (1) even the punitive option requires fiscal expenditures which governmental jurisdictions are hard-pressed to supply, and (2) the protections created for public inebriates in the 1960's and early 1970's have left a residue of constitutional protection which cannot easily be undone even though popular sentiment has shifted toward severe measures that equate treatment with punishment. Twenty-four notes and 79 references are provided.