Amsterdam aims to tackle the alcohol related roots of violence using a strategy already proven to have reduced violence by more than 40% in a UK city – Cardiff. Why not in your city?
The International Crime Victim Survey confirmed the importance of availability of alcohol to high rates of interpersonal violence. A UK Drug expert has identified alcohol as more dangerous than cocaine, because of the role of alcohol in street violence, sexual assault and traffic crashes.
The Cardiff strategy is a well known best practice to violence prevention specialists. It uses data from admissions to hospital emergency rooms to identify hot spots for alcohol related violence. This enables smart policing and bye-law enforcement to focus on the source of the alcohol and so reduce violence.
Likely this strategy would be as relevant in your city as in Amsterdam or Milwaukee. It is an obvious quick win for municipalities with huge savings in costs to hospitals and to police in calls for service – not to mention to the victims of violent assaults and, likely indirectly, sexual assaults.
You can watch an excellent TEDx presentation on the model. You can get more information on this and the other work of John Shepherd, including the original Lancet article.
This is just one of several best practices identified in the sources on what works to prevent violence, including WHO´s report on ¨The Evidence¨ .
It is one way to achieve the UK PM´s interest in dealing with crime in the most effective and cost effective way through prevention but it will require putting money where his mouth is in what works to prevent violence. Governments must invest now in effective and proven violence prevention or pay the huge costs of picking up the pieces and even bigger and more painful losses to the victims of violence.
A model strategy to enable politicians to have their cake and eat it – gradually – too is set out in plain English in chapters 8 and 9 of Less Law, More Order. Let´s read them. Lets apply them for victims of crime – and the taxpayers.
