Does Increasing Community and Liquor Licensees' Awareness, Police Activity, and Feedback Reduce Alcohol-Related Violent Crime? A Benefit-Cost Analysis

Hector Jose Navarro; Anthony Shakeshaft; Christopher M. Doran; Dennis J. Petrie

doi:10.3390/ijerph10115490

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Does Increasing Community and Liquor Licensees' Awareness, Police Activity, and Feedback Reduce Alcohol-Related Violent Crime? A Benefit-Cost Analysis

Hector Jose Navarro, Anthony Shakeshaft, Christopher M. Doran and Dennis J. Petrie

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol.10(11), pp.5490-5506

2013

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph10115490

PMCID: PMC3863856

PMID: 24169411

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Abstract

alcohol-related violent crime

intervention

community

liquor licensees

police

feedback

benefit-cost analysis

economic

Approximately half of all alcohol-related crime is violent crime associated with heavy episodic drinking. Multi-component interventions are highly acceptable to communities and may be effective in reducing alcohol-related crime generally, but their impact on alcohol-related violent crime has not been examined. This study evaluated the impact and benefit-cost of a multi-component intervention (increasing community and liquor licensees' awareness, police activity, and feedback) on crimes typically associated with alcohol-related violence. The intervention was tailored to weekends identified as historically problematic in 10 experimental communities in NSW, Australia, relative to 10 control ones. There was no effect on alcohol-related assaults and a small, but statistically significant and cost-beneficial, effect on alcohol-related sexual assaults: a 64% reduction in in the experimental relative to control communities, equivalent to five fewer alcohol-related sexual assaults, with a net social benefit estimated as AUD$ 3,938,218. The positive benefit-cost ratio was primarily a function of the value that communities placed on reducing alcohol-related harm: the intervention would need to be more than twice as effective for its economic benefits to be comparable to its costs. It is most likely that greater reductions in crimes associated with alcohol-related violence would be achieved by a combination of complementary legislative and community-based interventions.

Details

Title: Does Increasing Community and Liquor Licensees' Awareness, Police Activity, and Feedback Reduce Alcohol-Related Violent Crime? A Benefit-Cost Analysis
Authors: Hector Jose Navarro - UNSW Sydney
Anthony Shakeshaft (Corresponding Author) - UNSW Sydney
Christopher M. Doran - Hunter Medical Research Institute
Dennis J. Petrie - The University of Melbourne
Publication details: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol.10(11), pp.5490-5506
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date published: 2013
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph10115490
ISSN: 1660-4601
PMID: 24169411; PMC3863856
Copyright note: © 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
Grant note: Funded by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (http://www.fare.org.au/about-us/). The Australian Government provides core funding to the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre through the Substance Misuse Prevention and Service Improvement Grants Fund.
Organisation Unit: School of Health - Psychology
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991242153402621
Output Type: Journal article

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