Citation

Gruenewald PJ, Sumetsky N, Gaidus A, Ponicki W, Lee JP, Mair C. Addiction 2022; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/add.15914

PMID

35491751

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Retail alcohol outlets appear to open in neighborhoods with low land and structure rents near sources of demand; they may "agglomerate", open near to one another, or "churn", replace one another, over time. We used the turnover in numbers of outlets over time to measure agglomeration and churning and the impacts of openings and closings of outlets on neighborhood crime.

DESIGN: Interrupted quasi-experiments using spatial panel population data from 3,768 synthetic block areas over 6 years. SETTING: City of Oakland, California, USA. PARTICIPANTS: City population. MEASUREMENTS: Census-based sociodemographic estimates and counts of openings and closings of bars/pubs, restaurants and off-premises outlets related to assault, burglary and robbery crime incidents across synthetic Census blocks. Bayesian space-time models used to assess agglomeration and churning and measure impacts of openings/closings on crime.

FINDINGS: Churning was substantial; openings followed closings for all outlets (bars/pubs, relative risk [RR]=50.9, 95% credible interval [CI]: 3.0-449.9; restaurants, RR=3.1, CI: 1.5-6.1; off-premises, RR=23.5, CI: 2.0-129.8). Bars/pub and restaurant openings agglomerated with other outlets (e.g., RR=1.017, CI: 1.001-1.034 and RR=1.005, CI: 1.002-1.008), but off-premises outlets did not. Covarying out effects related to outlet densities, bar/pub openings were related to a 3.5% increase in assaults (RR=1.035, CI: 1.006-1.064) and 6.9% increase in robberies (RR=1.069, CI=1.025-1.113). Restaurant openings were related to a 5.3% increase in burglaries (RR=1.053, CI: 1.044-1.062). Openings and closings of off-premises outlets were unrelated to all three crime types.

CONCLUSIONS: Retail alcohol outlets appear to follow a pattern of opening near to one another and replacing each other over time. Bar, pub, and restaurant openings appear to be related to increases in neighborhood crime.

Language: en