The history of alcohol is as old as human history and it has a close relationship with our life and culture. Traditionally, alcohol is one of the finest food used for a religious service and welcoming guests in Korea. So, in that sense, gathering for ...
The history of alcohol is as old as human history and it has a close relationship with our life and culture. Traditionally, alcohol is one of the finest food used for a religious service and welcoming guests in Korea. So, in that sense, gathering for drinking alcohol is considered as an important social behavior. Having a proper drinking habit gives you a help for your social life, but too much drinking will make you loose your mind and can harm others. The types of legal violations caused by overdrinking are varies from minor crimes to major crimes like homicide. The crime occurred while intoxicated is rising 5% annually, and infringements of the public power, especially assaulting policemen, is reaching up to 45% of the drinking related crime. In this manner, it is obvious that the police authority is losing its power by the drunken peace breakers, but the law in force only allows placing the criminal under police protection or giving him a useless warning, which are not effective at all, according to the punishment of minor offenses act. Therefore, the police strongly desires for launch of a new law with effective sanction or punishment to treat the intoxicated. In this report, we studied the concept of intoxicated person with understanding of his behavior in criminal cases, and by knowing that, we researched the adaptable laws about the problem from foreign authorities. Also, we looked over the main contents of intoxicated person act suggested in the congress and surveyed the police and the public about the subject for a complement to the law.
Existing problems of intoxicated person related acts are as follows. First, absence of a law like 'preventing intoxication' of Japan results an abuse of police's discretion and negligence. Second, judging the condition of intoxicated person is normally done by policemen in the field, but it should be done by professional medical staff. Third, the act of intoxicated person protection should be done by welfare administrative agency, however, since police stations are playing two contradictory roles together under the current law, capturing the and protecting intoxicated person, it causes the animosity among the nation. Fourth, there is no detailed statement about protective facility and its standard in the law in act. Fifth, there are strong needs for specific guidelines on safe use and a usage standard of protective device. Sixths, since there is no specific punitive sanction related to the habitual intoxicated person, the effort of the police has been a running on empty. For the last, there is a problem of not having an exemption clause to policemen with well intentioned. Therefore, to solve the problems mentioned, here are four legislations or could be called solutions as follows.
First, the state of intoxicated person should be ranked and expressed numerically to be used as a standard for punishment similar to the case of driving while intoxicate. The graded punishment may include detention, penalty, measure of care and so on. Second, intoxicated person over 0.08% of Blood concentration alcohol should be diagnosed by professional medical staff. Third, intoxicated person who needs over four hours of relaxing and protection should be placed under the welfare administrative agency or facility which is fully sponsored by government. Fourth, we have to consider enacting laws to restrain the retailers who sell or supply any liquor to any person who is at that time in a state of intoxication.
The research is focused on the problem of not having the minimum sanction for the intoxicated person related problem, and it is obvious that punishment is not the best way to solve it. I also expect more in depth study about corrective and educative works for intoxicated person by other distinguished researchers