Family and domestic violence accounts for nearly half of all assaults in Australia. In New South Wales, the most populous state in Australia, reported rates of family and domestic violence have steadily increased since 2019. Successive Commonwealth and State governments across the country have launched plans and strategies, funded media and sports campaigns, and supported the work of foundations, all with the goal of preventing this kind of violence in particular. This approach is slightly different to the approach Australian governments have taken towards reducing non-domestic violence. Although there are many similarities, in New South Wales in particular, state authorities have used alcohol control policies with the intended aim of reducing rates of non-domestic violence.
One particular alcohol control policy introduced in New South Wales was known as the ‘Newcastle Solution’. Newcastle is a regional city in the state of New South Wales, and home to a late-night entertainment precinct. In 2008, in an effort to reduce assault rates in the entertainment precinct, the state’s Liquor Administration Board (defunct) introduced a range of administrative controls on all 14 on-licence alcohol outlets in the precinct as well as two temporal conditions: no new entries past 1.30am, and earlier closing times (resulting in a restriction of 0.5 – 1.5 trading hours depending on a venue’s original trading hours). Evaluations of the ‘Newcastle Solution’ found dramatic reductions in reported rates of non-domestic violence, largely attributed to the restrictions in trading hours.
However, current evidence-based violence prevention frameworks are focused on the shared risk-factors common to all kinds of violence, as their causes, perpetrators, and victims are often interconnected. As alcohol control policies have been proven to reduce rates of non-domestic violence, I was particularly interested in studying their effects on family and domestic violence. My co-authors and I conducted a non-equivalent controlled time series study to explore whether these alcohol controls had any effect on family and domestic violence in the same area.
Read the full blog by NDARC’s Michala Kowalski on the Institute of Alcohol Studies website.
