Alcohol Availability and Violence

Alcohol availability plays an important role in violence. Less is known about how spatiotemporal patterns of alcohol–violence association vary across time of day and across various crime types. This study examined whether and how the associations between on- and off-premise alcohol outlets and assaults, and between on- and off-premise alcohol outlets and robberies, vary across different times of day (morning, daytime, evening, and late night). This cross-sectional study used socioeconomic, alcohol license, and crime data from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, aggregated to US Census block groups and estimated spatially lagged maximum likelihood regression models that controlled for spatial dependence. On-premise outlets were negatively associated with evening assaults and positively associated with daytime and late-night robberies. Off-premise outlets were positively associated with evening assaults, late-night assaults, daytime robberies, and evening robberies. Spatiotemporal alcohol–violence associations vary across crime types and across time of day. On- and off-premise alcohol outlets play a unique role across four different temporal categories and across two violent crime types. These findings have the potential to inform theoretical explanations of the alcohol–violence relationship and may be beneficial when considering and designing custom-tailored local alcohol policy to reduce alcohol-related harm.