Alcohol-related violence is a significant global harm. Policy responses to this often include interventions rooted in criminal justice systems – e.g., policing operations in night-time economy districts and enhanced custodial sentences for violence committed under the influence. However, criminal justice systems also produce physical, social, and emotional harms, and entrench racial, class, and gender inequalities. While alcohol-related violence and criminal justice system responses may be linked in the policymaker imagination, it is essential that practitioners, researchers, and advocates seeking to address alcohol harm ask what further harm might be done by endorsing and advocating for policing and carceral responses to this violence. Further to this, these responses turn attention away from the environment in which such violence takes place – an environment, at least in part, co-created by a global alcohol industry and the bodies that regulate this. This panel will explore these ideas in an attempt to understand next steps in this policy space.
Speakers
Dr Lucy Bryant, Lecturer in Criminology
To be confirmed - Institute of Alcohol Studies in London.
