ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : The Wrong Place for Drunks

Orange County has never properly handled the problem of public drunks. The approach being taken in Garden Grove re-emphasizes the need to start providing treatment instead of jail time.

In what is believed to be the first program of its kind in the nation, the Garden Grove City Council authorized police this week to begin charging anyone taken to the City Jail for public intoxication what it costs police to make an arrest, process the case and watch over people until they are released about four to six hours later. The budget-strapped city is trying to recover as much as possible of the estimated $120,000 it spends on public drunks.

The problem for police in Garden Grove, as in other cities, is that they pick up about 400 people every year for public intoxication and have no place to take them. Because of its overcrowded conditions, County Jail is no longer accepting public drunks, so cities must keep them in police station holding tanks until they are sober enough to be released. In many cases, drunks are freed without formal charges being filed, so their time in jail is considered detention, not arrest.

But no matter what you call time spent in a holding tank, it comes out of the police budget.

The real problem is that public drunks never should be taken to any kind of jail cell in the first place. That approach is not only economically unsound but socially insensitive and shortsighted.

Public drunks are not criminals. They are people with a medical problem who need treatment and rehabilitation.

But Orange County--despite urging from past grand juries, the county sheriff, health officials and community leaders--still denies people with drinking problems the medical help they should be receiving. Unlike its more enlightened Los Angeles and San Diego neighbors, Orange County still has no detoxification centers. County leaders have talked about developing jail diversion programs for public drunks for years. Studies have been made. But no action has been taken.

As long as public officials continue to pay only lip service to the need, and the public resists efforts to locate sobering-up stations in their neighborhoods, public drunks will continue to create a problem that will in the long run cost the community much more than the jail costs the city seeks to recover.