On Sun, 22 Mar 1998, David Fahey wrote:
 
> According to the Justice Department report summarized at this web site
> about 40% of those on probation say they committed their crimes under the
> influence of alcohol.
>
This posting overlapped so neatly with some anti-temperance literature I
read yesterday that I thought I'd pass it along. Gallus Thomann, who wrote
a number of pamphlets sponsored by the United States Brewers Association,
said in his 1884 "Real and Imaginary Effects of Intempernace: A
Statistical Sketch" that "inasmuch as the most fervent hopes of all
convicts are fixed on the possibility of executive clemency in thier
behalf, they at once suspected that the inquiry into their antecedents was
instituted with a view to abbreviating their term of imprisonment, and
knowing that a pernicious sentimentality prevails in reference to victims
of drink, they were but too prone to plead inebriety, or even alcoholic
insanity in extenuation of thier crime..."
 
Of course, he was trying to debunk temperance claims about the % of
crime caused by drink, some of which were considerably higher even than
that suggested by the Justice Department posting.
 
Elaine Frantz Parsons
Department of History
Johns Hopkins University