NCJ Number
231408
Date Published
November 2009
Length
24 pages
Annotation
After significant restrictions on hours for selling alcoholic beverages in a number of licensed hotel premises in the New Castle area of New South Wales (Australia), this study examined whether this policy reduced the incidence of assaults in the vicinity of these premises.
Abstract
Two of the three data sources used in the study converged to suggest that the number of assaults decreased in the intervention site following the imposition of restrictions. None of the data sources indicated that there was any geographic displacement of assaults following the restriction. In addition, all three data sources provided evidence of a decrease in the proportion of assaults occurring between 3:00 am and 6:00 am, i.e., the time during which the late-trading premises were ordered to be closed. There were corresponding increases in the proportion of assaults recorded for earlier in the night; however, these did not wholly offset the reduction that occurred in the restricted hours. One threat to a causal inference from these data is that the study had no way of accounting for external factors that could also have influenced recorded crime in the intervention area. Three sources of police data were used in the research: recorded crime data, last-place-of-consumption data from the Alcohol Linking Program, and police call-out data. The recorded crime and Linking data were the two sources that showed a significant reduction in alcohol-related assaults in the intervention site but not the comparison site. 9 figures, 4 tables, 16 notes, 43 references, and appended supplementary data and analysis regarding reporting and recording bias and the impact of the intervention on other offense categories