Residential treatment facilities have an 80% "cure rate", with that number of people remaining of alcohol as of 12 months after treatment. Not to belittle AA, which is great for follow on treatment, those residential treatment programs can prescribe drugs like Naltrexone, Acamprosate, and Disulfiram which really do work for most people. Alcoholism is a common and entirely treatable condition and, from a purely economic argument, it is vastly cheaper to treat alcoholics than to imprison them. Government subsidized alcohol and drug residential treatment programs work and we are morons for not funding them. We blow money on affirmative action programs that can be shown to have very little impact on poverty and racism, and we don't spend money on alcohol, drug abuse, job training programs, that all have been shown to work? That's crazy.