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Article Excerpt
At the beginning of 1995, well-mannered public drinking was permitted in Finland. Contrary to expectations, this liberalization did not result in the civilizing of drinking habits. It brought public boozing, public urination, and street violence. In the article we examine to what extent public drinking has been perceived as a threat to public order in the media and in the parliamentary debate on the Act on Public Order (612/2003). The regulation of public space by the media and Parliament is approached as moral regulation. The analysis reveals that the moral regulation of public space was directed particularly to young people both in the media and in Parliament. The regulation techniques identified include community policing, substance abuse prevention, and the new Act on Public Order. The dominating perspectives of moral regulation were those of publicity, the police, and the protection of the freedom of the middle classes by Rightists.
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In the United States and in different parts of Europe, public space is today perceived to be afflicted by problems of public order and safety. Especially increases in asocial or criminal behavior in public or semipublic spaces, such as streets, city centers, commercial centers and parks, have been viewed as a threat (Hope & Parks, 2000; Matthews & Pitts, 2001). Ericson and Haggerty (1997) propose that the crisis of public space and the increasing risks to public safety therein can be explained by the individualization of society. The more people withdraw from the public and collective life into the private sphere and the more they value individual lifestyles, the more they are afraid of other people and see them as strangers and faceless others. According to Bauman (1999: 52), in a society that favors consumption, we readily interpret threatening others as restrictions on our freedom of choice and regard it as necessary to intervene in their behavior. Be it tobacco smoke in a public space, street prostitution, or misbehavior by young people in open areas, these are all dealt with in the same way as criminological issues by resorting to law and order.
Lifting the ban on public drinking in Finland in early 1995 and the resultant crisis of public space offer an interesting case for analyzing the extent to which public space is today viewed as a problem and what attempts are being made to regulate disturbances in public space. The presumption was that permitting public drinking would promote informal social regulation of drinking and have a civilizing influence on Finns so that their drinking habits would become more similar to those elsewhere in Europe. This was not what happened, though. On the contrary, boozing in parks and city centers and on streets became more common. Many cities responded to this by banning public drinking by means of a local ordinance. This, in turn, gave rise to lively discussions in the media as to whether such local ordinances were in conflict with the existing legislation, whether the police could apply them to regulate public space, and whether they subjected citizens to unequal treatment. The media, legal scholars, authorities and politicians started to see local ordinances as a problem, as a result of which preparations for new national-level legislation--that is, a new Act on Public Order--got under way.
We explore in our article how public drinking was defined as a problem of public order and safety by the media and in the Finnish Parliament. As for the media, our data consist of the alcohol-related editorials published in six different newspapers in 1993-2000. For Parliament, in turn, the parliamentary debate on the Act on Public Order with the related committee reports and opinions is analyzed. First, we present an analysis of how in the media public drinking was made a moral concern and a threat to public order and safety. Second, we analyze the ways in which this threat was dealt with during the legislative process of the new Act on Public Order in Finland. The bill was introduced to Parliament in March 2002, passed in February 2003, and took effect in October 2003 (612/2003).
The history of public intoxication and public drinking in the eyes of the legislators and the media
Legislation on drinking in public has a long history in Finland. As early as 1686, an assembly of the representatives of the estates drew attention to the growing problem of binge drinking as a result of an increasing use of alcohol. For the first time, the question of public drinking was inscribed in law in 1733. That year a decree, mainly advocated by the clergy, came into effect that made public intoxication subject to punishment, which varied from fines to several months' imprisonment (Tuominen, 1981: 17-19). During the Russian rule the penal scale in case of repeated public drinking offenses was tightened. Anyone who was caught drinking in public three times was not only fined but also put in the stocks on Sunday. The fourth offense could lead to six months' forced labor, and the fifth time to 12 months' forced labor (Tuominen, 1981: 29). In the late 19th century, provisions on public drinking were updated by the Penal Code (39/1889), which took effect in 1894. The new Penal Code provided that intoxication in public was punishable by a fine (Tuominen, 1981). In this form the decree remained in force until 1921, when it was replaced by a stricter provision in the Penal Code, drafted in the spirit of the Prohibition Act (1919-1932). This stricter provision increased the number of arrests for drunkenness. Moreover, an increasing proportion of those arrested for public intoxication were imprisoned, as they preferred imprisonment to fines (Alkoholikomiteat 1926-1931: 38-39).
In the 1931 referendum the Prohibition Act was abolished, and the Alcohol Act permitting the sale of alcohol came into force on 5 April 1932. Although the Alcohol Act was very comprehensive, it did not contain any explicit provisions on drinking or intoxication in public places. As a consequence,; the earlier provisions on public intoxication contained in the Penal Code remained in force in Finland until the beginning of 1969, when they were abolished by the new Alcohol Act (459/1968). One justification for abolishing the provisions on public intoxication was that the disturbance and nuisance caused by intoxication were seen as a minor disadvantage compared with the costs and tragedies that the enforcement of intoxication punishments entailed to society and citizens (Paihtyneiden kasittelyn ..., 1969). Although public intoxication was no longer considered an offense subject to the Penal Code in Finland after 1969, the ban on public drinking remained in force.
While the 1970s and 1980s were largely an uneventful period from the perspective of the regulation of public drinking, the 1990s marked a turning point in the situation. In 1995 Finland became a member of the European Union (EU), and since then the alcohol policy system has been substantially liberalized, as the following list states:
* In 1995 the monopolies on production, import, export, and wholesaling of alcoholic beverages were abolished.
* In 1995 regulations for alcohol advertisements were liberalized.
* The availability of alcohol through retail sales has been considerably increased as the number of monopoly shops grew and the opening hours were extended in the end of 1990s and at the beginning of 2000. Nowadays beer, cider and "alcopops" are also sold in (almost) all grocery stores, gas stations and kiosks.
* The prices of alcoholic beverages were dramatically decreased due to a tax cut in March 2004 and the import restrictions of alcoholic beverages within the EU were abolished.
* Well-mannered public drinking was decriminalized in 1995 but partly recriminalized in 2003.
* To get a license to run a pub or a restaurant became much easier. From 1995 to 2003 the number of fully licensed establishments rose from 3,500 to 5,300. Their opening hours were extended.
The liberalization of the alcohol policy system and the permittance of public drinking should be seen against the backdrop of the liberal breakthrough in the climate of public opinion. Liberalization of alcohol policy was demanded in the major Finnish newspapers as early as the 1950s, claiming that alcohol problems were caused by the bans imposed by the government. Further, it was argued that with a more liberal alcohol policy, alcohol would no longer been seen as a mythical "forbidden fruit" and would allow scope for everyday informal regulation of alcohol use (Piispa, 1981, 130). Although this type of liberalistic argument represented a strong trend in the press until the 1990s, there was variation in its visibility relative to other forms of alcohol regulation. For example, the press still accepted the need for a restrictive alcohol policy in the 1970s: Freedom was seen to be subordinate to public health. In the late 1980s, however, the situation changed: The press increasingly started to deal with alcohol issues as a liberation struggle by citizens and consumers against the government and the alcohol system that restricted access to alcohol (Piispa, 1991: 46-55). In the 1990s, there was growing criticism against restrictive policy, and in the mid-1990s, when the Alcohol Act was being relaxed, the criticism was very sharp.
Public space and moral regulation
In our article, we see public space as an area toward which people can orient themselves in different ways and which, depending on the context, can form part of different semantic worlds, political struggles, and regulation efforts (cf. Kopomaa, 1997: 38). In the regulation of public space, there is a struggle for meaning going on in all key arenas in society: in the media, in Parliament, among authorities, and in civil society. In this article we focus on the role of the media and legislation in the regulation of public space and public drinking.
The media as such offer the broadest possible public space for different societal actors to convene around issues of common interest (Crossley, 1996: 169). In media publicity, the core values of an ever-changing culture are being constructed, classified, and made visible (McQuail, 1994)....
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