NCJ Number
202350
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Dated: September 2003 Pages: 445-469
Date Published
September 2003
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This article discusses the relationship between alcohol availability and nonlethal violence.
Abstract
This study examined the compositional factors involved in neighborhood violence, along with an additional factor -- alcohol availability. The study focused on robberies and aggravated assaults reported to the police in the city of Miami. The alcohol-violence relationship at the community level was examined from two theoretical frameworks: social disorganization theory and routine activities approach. Social disorganization theory was concerned with the issue of social control: the ability of a neighborhood to regulate itself and to regulate the behavior of community residents and visitors to realize common goals, such as a crime-free environment. Routine activities theory was concerned with the convergence in time and space of motivated offenders, vulnerable victims, and the lack of capable guardians. The unit of analysis in this study was the 70 census tracts in the city of Miami with 500 or more residents. The data for all the independent variables except rates of alcohol outlets were obtained from the United States Bureau of the Census. The results revealed that alcohol availability was strongly associated with the violent crime rates considered. For total violence and its component measures of aggravated assault and robbery rates, total alcohol outlets was a positive predictor net of social disorganization and other variables included in the models. These findings of positive and significant effects of alcohol availability for both robbery and aggravated assaults are consistent with the few other neighborhood studies that examined this relationship and disaggregated types of violence. Miami is a multi-ethnic, majority Latino city with high levels of poverty, immigrants, and violence and a different economic base than most other cities that have been investigated. That alcohol and the two most prevalent forms of violence are related in this and other settings suggests the potentially broad implications of this factor for community violence and the importance of explicitly considering this issue in future research. The effects of alcohol availability were consistent with both social disorganization theory and routine activities theory. 3 tables, 10 footnotes, 55 references