The impact of COVID-19 and associated public health restrictions on trends in police-recorded violence in an English police force area.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic, and associated public health measures, had a marked impact on a number of health and wellbeing outcomes, including alcohol use and violence. Current literature presents a mixed view of the impact of the pandemic on violence trends. The current study utilises police offence data from a region of northern England to examine the impact of lockdowns, and subsequent relaxation of restrictions, on trends in violent offences. METHODS: Time series analyses using seasonal auto-regressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) modelling was used to investigate the impacts of the COVID-19 public health measures on weekly offence trends from April 1 2018 to March 20 2021. Additionally, pre-pandemic data were used to forecast expected trends had the pandemic not occurred. These expected trends were then compared to actual data to determine if the average levels of violence were outside the forecasted expectations. Overall violence and six subtypes (violence with and without injury, sexual offences including rape, domestic violence, and alcohol-related violent offences) were examined. RESULTS: Overall, the observed trend in police recorded violent offences demonstrated fluctuating patterns in line with commencement and easing of public health restrictions. That is, offence numbers declined during lockdowns and increased after relaxation of restrictions. However, the majority of observed values fell within the expected range. This broad pattern was also found for subtypes of violent offences. CONCLUSIONS: While violent crime trends demonstrated fluctuations with lockdowns, and subsequent easing of restrictions, these changes were not demonstrably larger than expected trends within this English region, suggesting that a sustained amplification in violence was not observed within this data. However, it is important to acknowledge the high levels of violence reported in this region across the study period, which should be used as a key driver for investing in long-term approaches to violence prevention. Given the extent of unreported violence generally, and that victims/survivors may come into contact with other support services (without reporting to the police), it is vital that policy and practice decisions take a holistic approach, considering a broad range of data sources.

How Policy Influences Aggression in Nightlife Spaces: A Proposed Core Aggression Cycle.

OBJECTIVE: This theoretical review examines prior theories that aim to explain the disproportionate amount of violence in Nighttime Entertainment Precincts (NEPs) and proposes a comprehensive model that links violence to policy and environmental changes. METHOD: To understand why this violence occurs and better inform prevention and intervention, a theoretical review using a "people" in "places" approach was conducted. This perspective considers the precursors of violence both at the individual level and among a group within a shared environment. RESULTS: Prior public health, criminology, and economic theories that aim to explain why violence occurs in NEPs provide a limited perspective, each only capturing part of the story. Further, prior theories fall short of demonstrating how policy and environmental changes in an NEP can influence the psychological determinants of aggression. When unified in a social-ecological framework, they can provide a more holistic explanation of violence in NEPs. We propose the Core Aggression Cycle (CAC) model, which draws from the prior theories examining violence in NEPs, and psychological theories of aggression. The CAC model is a proposed basis for unifying future research across disciplinary discourses. CONCLUSIONS: The CAC provides a clear conceptual framework that has the capacity to incorporate multiple previous and future theoretical perspectives on how alcohol policy and the environment influence violence within nightlife spaces. The CAC can be used by policy makers to establish new policy, critically evaluate existing policy, and determine whether policy adequately addresses the underlying mechanisms that produce violence in NEPs.