A book review essay considering You Owe Yourself a Drunk: An Ethnography of Urban Nomads, by James P. Spradley (1970)

Rieke, Luvern V.

English

UW Law Digital Commons (University of Washington)

Washington Law Review Volume 46 Number 3 5-1-1971 Alienation of the Skid-Road Tramp Luvern V. Rieke University of Washington School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wlr Recommended Citation Luvern V. Rieke, Reviews, Alienation of the Skid-Road Tramp, 46 Wash. L. Rev. 613 (1971). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wlr/vol46/iss3/9 This Reviews is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews and Journals at UW Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington Law Review by an authorized editor of UW Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact cnyberg@uw.edu. ALIENATION OF THE SKID-ROAD TRAMPLuvem V. Rieke*You OWE YOURSELF A DRUNK: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF URBANNoMADs. By James P. Spradley. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1970.Pp. 301. $3.95.The life-style of the skid-road alcoholic has been subjected to anal-ysis by both those who would treat him as an ill person and those whoregard him as a common criminal. His problems have recently receivedscrutiny by the highest court in several states and by the United StatesSupreme Court.' In writing You Owe Yourself a Drunk, ProfessorSpradley has added another dimension to this analysis and, by analo-gizing to the circumstances which create the alcoholic nomad, hassupplied an approach to the understanding of the numerous urbansubcultures which have become alienated from our dominant institu-tions. He has done a superb job with his dual objectives.The task involved in arresting, processing, and releasing the publicdrunk is massive. Spradley notes some pertinent statistics-everythird arrest in the nation is for public intoxication;2 Seattle policemake approximately 12,000 arrests for drunk in public each year; 3and seventy per cent of Seattle police man hours and eighty per centof Seattle jail space is required to handle what he terms the "chronicalcoholic offenders."4 Reviewing the social costs and impact of such a* Professor of Law, University of Washington. B.S., 1948, LL.B., 1949, University ofWashington; LL.M., 1953, University of Chicago.1. See, e.g., Powell v. Texas, 392 U.S. 514 (1968) in which the United States SupremeCourt held that the Constitution does not prohibit a state from making public drunken-ness a criminal offense.2. J. SPRADLEY, You OwX YoURsELF A DRUNk: AN Eim~oGRAPH- oF" URBAN NonuADs9 (1970) [hereinafter cited as SPRADLEY]; Cf. PRESmNT'S COaunssioN ON LAW EN-FORCEMENT AND ADtrmnSTRATIoN OF JUSTc TASN FoRcE REPORT: DRUwxNESS 1(1967).3. SmPADLY at 9. This was true when Spradley did his study. During 1968 there were10,904 such arrests and, in 1969, 10,145. Source: data extracted by review author fromthe unpublished arrest records of the Seattle Police Department.4. SPRADLEY at 9. Spradley did not have access to data concerning frequency ofre-arrests and his reference to "chronic" offender may be a bit too general. The 10,904arrests in 1968 involved 5,988 persons of whom 4,083 were arrested only once duringthe year. The remaining 1,905 persons, however, averaged over three arrests eachand can fairly be called "chronic offenders." The statistics for 1969 are similar: 10,145613Washington Law Reviewvolume of arrests, Spradley asks whether the gains are worth the price.What valid societal purpose is served by a system which subjects theoffender to the ritual of "making the bucket" and waiting for a"kickout" a few days or weeks later? Passing the issue of society'simmediate interest, the author develops a series of questions in whichhe inquires about the system's effect upon the individual involved.What, he asks, did it mean to the man who had, cumulatively, beensentenced to 5,340 days in jail-more than fourteen years-to realizethat he could have avoided all jail time by posting bail totalling lessthan $100 for each of those years. Did he conclude that society placedso slight a value upon his time and freedom? Does the man arrestedfor public drunkenness feel excluded from normal social contacts anddoes he assume that he must identify himself with a new sub-culturein order to survive?These questions, Dr. Spradley believes, can only be answered byexamining the attitudes of the offender. The opinions held by legis-lators, judges, and scholars concerning the value, or lack of value,inherent in current treatment of the alcoholic offender can be ascer-tained without much difficulty: one need only read the statutes, legalopinions and publications. But how does one discover the collectiveview held by a nomadic sub-culture populated by persons who writefew books, deliver few lectures, and whose life style stresses the needfor low visibility? Development of such information is a proper taskfor an anthropologist skilled in ethnography. Dr. Spradley is preciselythat and his book describes how he obtained an "insider's point ofview."Aided by insights gained from identification with the alcoholicoffender, the author is able to observe "how repeated arrest andincarceration changes identities, facilitates the assimilation of thepatterns of this culture, motivates these men to take up the life styleof urban nomads." He begins and ends his study with thought-pro-voking conclusions prompted by his observations: "incarceration injail, intended as punishment for public drunkenness, is a cause of pub-arrests; 5,305 persons, 3,637 of whom were arrested only once and 1,668 of whom werearrested an average of 3.9 times. It is interesting to notice that in both years approx-imately one-third of the offenders (31.8% and 31.5%) accounted for nearly two-thirdsof the arrests (62.6% and 64.1%). Data extracted from the arrest records of the SeattlePolice Department.614Vol. 46: 613) 1971Reviewslic drunkenness .... ."I and "after thirty days in jail a tramp oweshimself a drunk, not simply because he desires to gratify those im-pulses which have been denied while incarcerated, but because drinkingand drunkenness are the prime symbols of acceptance for the man whohas come through a ritual experience of alienation."6Analogizing from these specifics, Professor Spradley reaches hisbroader thesis: our cities are wracked with the pain of stress and dis-content; the integrity of our legal and political system is undergoingsevere challenge; and gaping disparities exist among our sub-cultureslargely because our lack of understanding of sub-populations inhibitsmaking our institutions responsive to the needs of our people. "Amer-ica is faced," writes Spradley, "not simply with an urban crisis, butwith a grand experiment in human community: can we create a societywhich recognizes the dignity of diverse cultural patterns? ' 7 Not onlydoes he believe these patterns can be understood but:8When that day comes we will have moved closer to destroyingthe separateness which now permeates our cities, closer to in-cluding all the various subcultures in our multicultural society.Institutional renewal must go on until we have a society basednot on the unity of similarity, but on the acceptance of difference.Beyond our nation, living in other cultures, is a world of strangers.Recognizing the dignity of urban nomads is a small but importantstep to creating a world of strangers who are friends.With surprising success, Professor Spradley integrates both themesthroughout nearly all his book. He is indeed interested in those whoare found drunk in public, but finds them also to be instructive con-cerning our many cultural "islands, each separated by wide stretchesof turbulent sea. Puerto Ricans, the poor, suburbanites, police,Blacks, Indians, Mexican-Americans, students, moderates, extremists-all [who] seem to practice and believe in different life styles [who]adhere to different values." 9 Institutional reform, we are told, mustawait such illumination:105. SpmLE at 5.6. Id. at 256.7. Id. at 4-5.8. Id. at 262.9. Id. at 3.10. Id. at 5-6.615Washington Law ReviewEffective renewal requires an exhaustive knowledge of our sub-cultures, a knowledge that can be gained by the kind of studypresented here. This book is not written for urban nomads toshow them how to adapt to the social and cultural constraintsplaced upon them by our institutions; rather, it is intended forthose of us who are not affected by these forces but who have thepower to change them.Although Dr. Spradley is too courteous to say so, it would seem thatlawyers are among those who have the power to change our institu-tions and who should be interested in learning what changes are indi-cated.You Owe Yourself a Drunk is organized in a helpful way. Followingthe chapter of orientation and an introduction to the arts of theanthropologists, the author introduces Mr. William R. Tanner. Fifty-three pages are spent examining quotations from Mr. Tanner's phonecalls and conversations and excerpts edited from diary entries or letterswritten by Mr. Tanner from jails, drunk farms and hospitals. Thusthe reader begins to see the tramp as the tramp sees himself.Following chapters continue the process. Taxonomic and com-ponential definitions are developed to explain what it means to be atramp and to illustrate the reasons for that culture's division intomission stiffs, airedales, rubber tramps, bindle stiffs, box car tramps orinto other subdivisions dependent largely upon mode of travel andmeans of acquiring a livelihood. The perspective provided by thesechapters enables one to appreciate how law enforcement patterns forcethe impoverished alcoholic into a nomadic existence.However, it takes longer to illustrate how the criminal justice systemteaches the individual to be a bum. In chapter 5 the tramps, speakingthrough the author whom they have educated by hundreds of inter-views, describe with chilling clarity what is involved in "making thebucket"-from the street to final deposit in the drunk tank.Lawyers will not be surprised to read that the "trial" of the alco-holic nomad is rudimentary at best, but it may be shocking to learnthat tramps regard the courtroom ritual as the stage at which "theymake you feel like a bum." The court experience, described in chapter6, is for the tramp the worst experience of all because it is there thatthe offenders are "herded around like a bunch of cattle-dumbanimals"; where they learn that attempts to explain "almost always616Vol. 46: 613, 1971Reviewsend in failure"; where they must quickly "comply with the system";and where "you look and feel like a bum whether you are or not."'The next two chapters, "Doing Time" and "Freedom of Hustle,"describe what may be thought to be the finishing school essential forlife as a Skid Road drunk. It is the jail that teaches the alcoholicnomad to adapt and to absorb "attitudes, values, and skills requiredfor survival." He learns:"the very terms and meanings ... crucial to his socialization....Most important, as he is fully socialized into this culture he learnsthe underlying semantic principles of such domains as tramps,trusties, flops, time, place in the bucket, hustling, and ways ofmaking it.He is, finally, "alienated from the rest of society-but not fromhimself or others like him." His time in the bucket has been his ritualof passage into a new life.11. Id. at 192.12. Id. at 251.617

Alienation of the Skid-Road Tramp

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Alienation of the Skid-Road Tramp

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