According to Crime Survey for England and Wales data, alcohol-related violence has fallen in both absolute terms and as a proportion of all violence over the last decade.
IAS’s latest report examines possible explanations for this. Alcohol-related violence remains a pressing policy concern – with more than half a million alcohol-related violence incidents recorded in 2019/20 – but in seeking to explain these trends we might identify levers policymakers and practitioners can exploit to reduce levels of violence further.
Read our blog by Lucy Bryant, which summarises the report and its findings.
The report suggests:
- Declines in youth drinking might contribute to this violence decline (as younger, rather than older age groups, predominantly engage in violence in night-time economy settings).
- A steeper decline in alcohol-related violence relative to violence overall appears to be accounted for by shifts in alcohol-related stranger and acquaintance violence; the proportion of domestic violence incidents which were alcohol-related generally remained stable across the period investigated.
- Investigation of the production of these National Statistics should be undertaken to assess whether any data artefacts form some part of this decline.
