Sobering Recommendation

One recommendation of the 1986-87 Orange County Grand Jury, which will finish its term on Tuesday, urges the county Board of Supervisors to plan and develop sobering-up stations for public drunks. It’s a need that ought to be near the top of the county’s priority list. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been there in the past, and the immediate future offers little prospect for change. There is no money in the proposed new county budget to create sobering-up stations.

The current grand jury didn’t go as far with its recommendation as did last year’s panel, which said that the county was still “in the 14th Century” when it came to providing complete alcohol-recovery programs.

Past grand juries--as well as the sheriff, health officials and community leaders--all have supported detoxification centers that would treat public drunkenness for what it is: an illness, not a crime.

The only real progress that the county has achieved on this front is that it no longer puts public drunks in the county jail, and even that act of enlightenment was not voluntary. It came as a result of overcrowding at the Orange County Jail and Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates’ decision that he no longer would accept drunks off the street. The jail policy may have been dictated by circumstance, but Gates has consistently been a strong supporter of jail diversion programs for drunkenness.

Even if there was a surplus of jail beds for public drunks, however, it would not begin to solve the real problem of detoxification.

There aren’t enough private centers to begin to ease the problem. In 1985, the last full year that drunks were housed at the county jail, there were 7,000 bookings for public drunkenness. Not all of those were chronic street drunks. They included thousands of people who have homes, jobs, families and respected positions in the community, but who had too much to drink at a ball game, concert or other public gathering.

These people don’t belong in jail, but they shouldn’t be on the street, either.

A problem drinker has a medical condition, and should be in a facility that offers care and counseling. San Diego County operates such a center. So does Los Angeles County.

The Board of Supervisors formed a task force, which about three years ago recommended opening a centrally located sobering-up station in Santa Ana. And last year the supervisors ordered county staff members to work out details for establishing a sobering-up station.

After all these years, it’s time that the county board created a sobering-up station instead of more task forces, more committees and more studies.