Australia: Research commissioned into alcohol availability and domestic violence
The Mandarin
By Tom Ravlic
April 19, 2022
The Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority in New South Wales has commissioned research to determine what links exist between the availability of alcohol and domestic violence.
Philip Crawford, the chair of the liquor and gaming regulator, said the findings of what is landmark research for the regulator will help inform licensing decisions and provide a reliable basis upon which to establish a threshold for liquor licence limits.
Research will be conducted on behalf of the regulator by a team from LaTrobe University, focussing on the saturation of liquor outlets and criminal incidents over time in NSW.
“This is the first longitudinal study of its kind in NSW and it will enhance liquor regulation so the community can live, work and play in safety and businesses can open and operate in an optimal environment,” said Crawford.
“Better data will provide confidence for small businesses to apply for on-premises licences, such as cafes, restaurants and hotels, while supporting decisions around packaged licences.
“By examining the data available to us, we can better understand how the number of liquor licences can affect crime rates in a community.”
The eight-month project will look at licensing and crime data between 2013 and 2020 in order to explore whether there are observables links between the number of licensed outlets selling alcohol and domestic violence recorded in crime data.
Dr Jason Jiang is a member of the LaTrobe University research team and he said that the research will involve looking at multiple sets of data.
“As part of the project we will analyse administrative datasets from Liquor & Gaming NSW, The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research and The Australian Bureau of Statistics,” Jiang said.
“In addition to investigating associations between the saturation of outlets and criminal incidents, we will determine whether adding an outlet to an area of socio-economic disadvantage has more or less impact on harms than in more advantaged areas.”