Estimating the Relationship between Alcohol Policies and Criminal Violence and Victimization

Abstract

Violence is one of the leading social problems in the United States. The development of appropriate public policies to curtail violence is confounded by the relationship between alcohol and violence. In this paper, we estimate the propensity of alcohol control policies to reduce the perpetration and victimization of criminal violence. We measure violence with data on individual level victimizations from the U.S. National Crime Victimization Survey. We examine the effects of a number of different alcohol control policies in reducing violent crime. These policies include the retail price of beer, drunk driving laws and penalties, keg laws, and serving and selling laws. We find some evidence of a negative relationship between alcohol prices and the probability of alcohol or drug related assault victimizations. However, we find no strong evidence that other alcohol policies are effective in reducing violent crimes. These results provide policy makers with guidance on potential approaches for reducing violence through alcohol beverage control.

A Review of Existing Studies Reporting the Negative Effects of Alcohol Access and Positive Effects of Alcohol Control Policies on Interpersonal Violence

“…Police reports ( n = 61, 70%) and assaults ( n = 33, 38%) were the prominent data source and violent event type. Two alcohol price studies used crime data flagged as alcohol attributable ( 68 , 69 ). Thirteen alcohol trading hour studies stratified crime data to primary drinking days per hour.…”

“…To ensure data independence between spatial units, one of the eight cross-sectional alcohol price studies accounted for unit dependence ( 69 ), and 32 of the 56 alcohol outlet density studies controlled or tested for lag 1 (first-order contiguity) autocorrelations, or specified spatially lagged dependency effects between analysis units. One intervention panel ( 42 ) and four intervention time-series studies ( 6 , 60 , 65 , 113 ) tested for serial temporal autocorrelation or difference time-series to stationarity, while two intervention panel ( 61 , 84 ), one panel ( 85 ), and one time-series study ( 66 ) explored temporally lagged effects including alcohol consumption or alcohol policy laws on the occurrence of reported violence.…”

“…Of the 12 alcohol price or tax policy studies, seven (58%) reported significant policy effects on violent crime and injuries ( 68 , 69 , 84 , 86 – 88 , 102 ). One of the four policy intervention studies reported a decrease in assaults and robberies following a 1991 increase in alcohol taxes ( 84 ).…”

Heterogeneity in Smokers' Responses to Tobacco Control Policies

“…More recently, Shrestha (2015a) finds a substitution relationship between alcohol and cigarettes, concentrated among the heaviest drinkers. It is common to use alcohol prices to identify relationships between alcohol policies and drinking behavior, because there is little variation in alcohol taxes at the state level (e.g., Decker and Schwartz, 2000;Markowitz, 2000;Markowitz et al, 2012;Shrestha, 2015b;a). Between 1990 and 2008, only 15 states changed the nominal value of their beer tax, while all but two states (Missouri and North Dakota) changed the nominal value of their cigarette taxes.…”

The Economics of Minimum Pricing for Alcohol

“…Markowitz et al. (), for instance, using US data find that a one‐dollar increase in the real price of beer is associated with about a 0.04 percentage point decrease in an individual's probability of being assaulted in a six‐month period. But, while higher real beer prices lower violence, magnitudes are small and coefficients are statistically insignificant.…”