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Half the prison admissions for England and Wales are of persons on drunkenness charges (BMJ 1968). Ratcliff (1966) records that there were, in one year, 1,180 occasions in Scotland when a man was actually imprisoned as a result of a drinking offence. He found that on average the offender had seven previous sentences for the same alcoholic offence. An important factor for prison alcoholics is the extent to which they resemble or differ from alcoholics who are receiving psychiatric treatment.
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Christopher Ross (1971) studied this question.
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