Police-issued barring notices in Western Australia: An analysis of the type, seriousness and trajectory of associated offences.

INTRODUCTION: Police-issued barring notices are currently used in Western Australia in response to alcohol-related disorderly and anti-social behaviour. This paper examines the type, severity and trajectory of the offending behaviours associated with served barring notices. METHOD: WA Police Force de-identified the data for 3815 individuals who had received one or more police-imposed barring notice/s between 2011 and 2020. The offence category associated with each barring notice was examined to explore the overall breakdown and whether/how offending categories change for recipients of subsequent barring notices. RESULTS: For single and multiple barring notice recipients, the most common offence categories were fighting/physical violence and public order offences. Within a subset of the data, non-anti-social offences also spiked. Aggressive behaviours predominate for recipients in metropolitan areas, compared with public order offences in regional locations. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: For recipients of multiple barring notices, behaviours do not become more serious but neither do they moderate to any notable extent. The low number of repeat barring notices (5%) may suggest an overall beneficial effect on recipient behaviours but more analysis is needed to examine the potential confounding effects of factors, such as fly-in/fly-out workers, policing and locational differences.

Do patron bans affect subsequent behaviour? An examination of pre- and post-ban offending for barring notice and prohibition order recipients in Western Australia.

INTRODUCTION: To explore whether receipt of either of two patron banning provisions currently used in Western Australia-in response to alcohol-related disorderly and anti-social behaviour-is associated with changes to subsequent offending. METHOD: Western Australia Police de-identified the offender records and associated data for 3440 individuals who had received one or more police-imposed barring notice/s between 2011 and 2020, and 319 individuals who had received one or more prohibition orders between 2013 and 2020. The number of offences recorded for each recipient before and after the first notice/order were examined to understand the potential effect of both provisions upon subsequent offending. RESULTS: The low number of repeat barring notices (5% of the total) and prohibition orders (1% of the total) points to their general success. Analysis of offending records before and after receipt/expiry of either provision indicates that both have a generally positive effect on subsequent behaviours. For all barring notice recipients, 52% recorded no further offences and for all prohibition order recipients, 58% recorded no further offences. There was a less positive effect for the sub-set of multiple ban recipients and prolific offenders. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Barring notices and prohibition orders appear to have a generally positive effect on subsequent behaviours for the majority of recipients. More targeted interventions are recommended for repeat offenders, for whom patron banning provisions have a more limited effect.