Alcohol, Alcoholism, and Crime

Abstract

This article is concerned with the overlapping of two phe nomena, each of which can occur independently of the other. The first is deviation from the specific social custom of drinking. The second, crime, refers to a class of deviations from many different customs of a society—deviations possessing one unique attribute in common, that of eliciting purposeful, negative sanc tions by the government. General knowledge about deviation from custom and about the impact of alcohol upon human behavior must be combined with an understanding of each of these two categories of deviance in order to assess the overlap.