Flexible trading hours 'neither fuel or cut violence'
The report, called Do flexible alcohol trading hours reduce violence?, published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, examined the situation in Manchester between 2004 and 2008, using trading records for more than 600 outlets as well as police records on violence.
“We found considerable variation in the implementation of extended trading hours across the city, which affected area-level exposure of changes in alcohol availability and staggered closing times,” said the abstract to the study.
“To isolate the effect of these changes on violence, we performed a dose–response analysis to examine whether improved staggering of closing hours (or increased alcohol availability) was associated with decreases in violence.
'No evidence'
“We found no evidence to support the government-proposed hypothesis that staggered closing reduces violence. We also found no support for the alternative hypothesis; that increase alcohol availability would result in increased violence.”
The report’s authors are David Humphreys of the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge and the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at University of Oxford, and Manuel Eisner of the Institute of Criminology at University of Cambridge.
