I am writing my critique on a blog from Grits For Breakfast. The article is titled Austin may follow Houston, SA, creating non-jail alternative for public intoxication, authors name Grits. The article talks about reducing arrest for public intoxication by creating a place for people to sober up without taking them to jail.
The grits starts his article agreeing with another article in Austin Statesman Newspaper written by Eric Dexheimer and Tony Plohetski who says that getting arrested and criminally charged with public intoxication in Travis County is a common thing on Sixth Street and soon it might stop. In this article the evidence they use to support this idea is that over the past five years they have had about 27,000 arrests in Austin and they are taken to jail, have their mug shots taken, fingerprinted and face future court hearings and costs. They want this to stop so many medical officials, law enforcement and more want to open a sobriety center “drunk tank” which they believe it would decriminalize public intoxication.
By this plan they plan not to arrest the intoxicated suspects but just take them to the center which Grit’s agrees because they believe this way the police officers would get back to their duties more rapidly and attend for more serious offences. Also Grits uses another good evidence from the Statesman who tells the opinion of a Travis County-at-Law Judge Nancy Hogengarten, who believes that people actually recognize that the substance use is a problem in the community, but putting them in jail doesn't solve the problem. At the end Grits agrees with this idea and the last evidence they give are the examples of Houston who opened a similar sobriety center and how San Antonio has operated one since 2008 so it wont be the first time they ever do this.
The author gives some good evidence in their blog but mainly just from one source which I don’t like. They are very good points, but he could use more than one, get more evidence and examples from other people. Also I am not sure if I agree with Grits, its sounds good but also if you think about it, it gives more rights for people to get drunk knowing they are not going to jail or get in trouble. They wont learn from their consequences. I don’t fully agree with this plan, but at the end it might always help to try something new.
