The impact of a lockout policy on levels of alcohol‐related incidents in and around licensed premises

Abstract

This paper reports on the impact of a lockout policy on levels of alcohol‐related offences in and around licensed premises. The lockout policy prevents patrons from entering or re‐entering late night trading licensed premises for a specific period prior to closure. A modified police activity log was utilised by all first response operational police to record their attendance at incidents in and around licensed premises. Chi‐square analyses of the prevalence of incidents before and after implementation of the lockout policy demonstrated that the number of alcohol‐related offences requiring police attention was significantly proportionally lower following the liquor trading changes. Alcohol‐related offences, particularly those related to disturbances and sexual offences were significantly reduced following the introduction of the lockout policy. However, while offences related to property, stealing, and assault experienced a reduced trend, these did not reach significance. In contrast, traffic offence rates were unchanged. The findings of the study provide supportive evidence that lockout initiatives have potential as a major crime prevention technique to reduce specific types of alcohol‐related offences.

Keywords:

• alcohol
• police
• licensed
• lockout
• preventing violence

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the National Drug Strategy Funding Law Enforcement Committee and supported by the Queensland Police Service. The current research project was conducted at the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland (CARRS‐Q), within the School of Psychology and Counselling, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Disclaimer: the views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Queensland Police Service. Any errors of omission or commission are the responsibility of the author/s.

Notes

1. However, it is noted that a limitation of this applied research in a natural setting is that the pre‐ and post‐data collection periods were not of the same length, which is discussed further in the ‘Limitations’ section of this paper.

2. The data were also converted to calculate a rate of alcohol‐related incidents per unit in time, for example, number per week. The corresponding analysis also demonstrated a similar reduction in incidents after the introduction of the lockout policy.

3. In addition, further analyses did not identify a subset of licensed premises that were responsible for a disproportionate number of offences either before or after implementation of the lockout policy.