Michael Albertson:  It is almost an impossible undertaking for any court to address addiction.  There is simply neither the time nor the funds to do so.  Further, in most of the cases you point out, while alcohol may be the causative factor that landed the person in jail, he or she got there for breaking some underlying law that they are charged and convicted of.  When I attended the Mass. Institute of Forensic pathology, I was taught that almost 75% of inmates to prison suffered from some underlying mental health issue including addiction.  The problem came in that while the largest percentage of inmates served less than​ 4 years in prison, it took on average a full 5 years to get them in some viable treatment program.  So far, no one has been able to come up with an adequate way to correct that problem.