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A number of studies relating to the impact of the Licensing Act 2003 have been described as either inconclusive or lacking implementation detail. This study, five years after the introduction of the Act, adds to this body of research by assessing the implications for Preston, England's newest city. Through interviews with police officers, licence holders and paramedics, it concentrates on how the Act was implemented and outlines the changes that have occurred. In essence, it shows how consumers are more likely to ‘pre‐load’ prior to leaving home, how drinking and associated crime patterns have been extended into the early hours of the morning, and how incidents of alcohol‐related crime have reduced.

This paper will reflect on the impact of the Licensing Act 2003 (LA03). It will focus primarily on how the LA03 has been introduced to, and has influenced, the night‐time economy (NTE). More specifically, it will examine the impact of the LA03 on alcohol‐related crime, disorder and harm to health, within an urban context. It will review the evidence base for the impact of the LA03, suggesting reasons why the UK experience of extended trading hours is not consistent with international evidence. It will examine the mixed findings from evaluations as to its success/failures/limited influence, and discuss its impact on a number of organisations involved in the promotion and safety of the NTE. It will highlight the continued struggles encountered within the NTE, between the promotion of an enjoyable and profitable NTE, and those who have responsibility for maintaining a safe NTE environment. It will also discuss potential extraneous factors that have superseded the LA03, before concluding by offering and discussing some possible avenues for future direction.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the prevalence and impact of alcohol‐related incidents on police resources in a major Australasian region.

The paper shows that participants in the current study were first response operational police officers who completed a modified activity log over a five‐week period, identifying the type, time spent on, and the number of alcohol‐related incidents that were attended (n=31090).

The findings in this paper indicate that a substantial proportion of current police work involves attendance at alcohol‐related incidents i.e. 25 percent. The most common incidents police attended were vehicle and/or traffic matters, disturbances and offences against property, which were also the most likely to involve alcohol. These events are most likely to occur in the early hours of the morning on the weekends, and importantly, usually take longer to complete than non‐alcohol related incidents.

The findings in the paper highlight the pervasive nature of alcohol across a range of offences and provides a current perspective regarding the considerable impact that alcohol‐related crime has on policing resources.

The purpose of this paper is to detail the prevalence and nature of patrol officers' alcohol‐related workload.

A systematic social observation (SSO) methodology was used to collect data pertaining to the alcohol‐related activities and encounters of patrol officers. A fully randomized sampling procedure was used to select the days, times, and geographic areas of observation sessions. Observational data were obtained for 65 separate observations sessions ‐ totaling approximately 650 hours, 480 police‐citizen encounters, with 766 citizens, and 2,009 non‐encounter activities.

Approximately 26 percent of encounters and 10 percent of non‐encounter activities involved citizen alcohol use. Roughly 15 percent of patrol officer time is dedicated to alcohol‐related encounters and their associated activities. Alcohol‐related encounters were of a substantively different type than those in which there was no alcohol involvement. In sum, alcohol‐related encounters were more likely to involve a crime, occur in emotionally volatile situations, elicit a multiple‐officer response, and to take place out of the public sphere.

The paper demonstrates the utility of police‐researcher collaboration. The findings can make a direct contribution to academy and in‐service training.

Unlike previous SSO studies, this research used data obtained from a representative sample of police patrols. The use of a SSO protocol provides a level of detail about the nature of police‐citizen interactions within the context of alcohol‐related encounters not previously seen in the literature.

The annual cost of alcohol‐related harm in the UK is estimated to be between £17.7 and £25.1 billion with healthcare costs alone reaching £2.7 billion and the costs of alcohol‐fuelled crime and disorder accounting for £7.3 billion each year. The aim of the study was to examine the prevalence of alcohol use disorders (AUD) in prison and probation settings in the North East of England, and to compare the ability of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and Offender Assessment System (OASys) at identifying alcohol‐related need in probation clients. A quantitative prevalence study was carried out using anonymous questionnaires with participants from four prisons and three probation offices in the North East who voluntarily completed the AUDIT questionnaire during a 1‐month period in 2006. Response outcomes on AUDIT were compared with OASys scores which identify alcohol‐related need in probation. At the time of the study OASys scores were not available for offenders in prison. Seven hundred and fifteen questionnaires were completed. Sixty‐three per cent of men and 57% of women were identified as having an AUD with over a third of all individuals scoring within the possibly dependant range (20+ on AUDIT). Around 40% of probation cases who were classified as either hazardous, harmful or possibly dependant drinkers on AUDIT were not identified by OASys. The results indicate that the prevalence of AUD in offenders is much higher than in the general population. In addition, current methods of identifying offenders with alcohol‐related need in probation are flawed and as many such people go undetected. Alcohol assessment procedures need to be improved in criminal justice setting order to correctly identify people with AUD.

When a problem with underage drinking in the seaside town of Hastings was highlighted by an analysis into public place violent crime, the local community safety partnership ‐ the Safer Hastings Partnership ‐ turned to 175 local young people to ask them directly about their experiences and perceptions of underage drinking and antisocial behaviour. The findings were both enlightening and concerning, but have enabled more effective enforcement activity and have led to local young people themselves using the findings of the consultation to develop educational resources targeted at their peers.

Developing policies to curb public alcohol consumption is a priority for governments. In the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), local governments have introduced alcohol-free zones (AFZs) and alcohol-prohibited areas (APAs) to prohibit the public consumption of alcohol and reduce crime stemming from intoxication. Previous studies, however, argue that these policies are driven by stakeholder desire rather than alcohol-related crime and may result in increased criminal justice contact for vulnerable populations. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the number of AFZs and APAs in NSW and examine the extent to which these policies are connected to the frequency of alcohol-related crime.

Examining the 152 local government areas (LGAs) of NSW, the authors analysed whether the implementation of AFZs and APAs were linked to the frequency of liquor offences and assaults using group-based trajectory models.

The authors found that AFZs and APAs were often not advertised nor inconsistently implemented both across and within jurisdictions. Group-based trajectory models indicated that AFZs were more common in low liquor offence LGAs than high liquor offences LGAs, but were more frequently implemented in high assault LGAs compared to low assault LGAs. APAs were more common in the lowest crime LGAs compared to those LGAs that experienced higher levels of recorded crime.

These analyses demonstrate how widespread AFZs and APAs have become and provides evidence that the implementation of is only tenuously linked to the frequency of crime.

The development of policy and delivery of interventions in the connected fields of alcohol and criminal justice is a complex area with implications for the single and joined‐up work of a range of agencies working across health, criminal justice and local government. This paper provides an overview of some of the connected health and criminal justice policy challenges relating to the commissioning and delivery of alcohol services for offenders.

Field studies of police behavior have tended to focus on the generalized patrol function in major urban areas. Largely absent from this body of literature are considerations of specialized units, particularly in smaller communities. Studies of police discretion often center on the arrest decision, giving less attention to other aspects of sanctioning discretion. This study seeks to examine how police officers in a mid‐western college community used leniency and coercion to negotiate order in policing the consumption of alcohol by college‐aged youth.

Field observations and interviews were used to study decision‐making patterns among both general patrol officers and personnel assigned to a specialized unit tasked with patrolling alcohol establishments.

Findings suggested that officers employed leniency in variable patterns, primarily based on duty assignment. At the same time, citizen demeanor was often a key in shaping sanctioning outcomes in alcohol‐enforcement encounters. Within the enforcement unit, interactions between officers and young adults were surprisingly amicable, despite the potential for more contentious relations.

The use of qualitative methods in a single agency renders the findings exploratory in nature; further inquiry might examine the policing of youth drinking using more systematic means in similar communities.

Study findings contribute to understanding of police discretion by exploring the issue in an under‐studied venue and by contrasting enforcement decisions between officers with different duty assignments.

Current criminological theory and the Government's focus on ‘community safety’ and ‘crime and disorder reduction’ has led to the creation of a new discipline, or at least a new paradigm, that of crime science. This article explores the theoretical basis and multi‐disciplinary nature of crime science and its usefulness in the reduction of alcohol and drug‐related crime.