Homicides with direct and indirect links to the night‐time economy

Introduction and Aims: Alcohol use and homicide are a wide community concern with particular interest in understanding and preventing attacks (e.g. ‘one punch’ male on male attacks) in commercial nightlife settings with high levels of collective drinking. There is insufficient knowledge of the long‐term patterns in this violence or the relationship between public drinking and flow on violence in other social settings. Design and Methods: Alcohol‐related homicides were those in which alcohol consumption was a contributing factor. Those also linked to purchase or consumption in locations where alcohol is sold after dark were classified as night‐time economy related. The study comprised a first‐hand analysis of files in the archive of the Australian National Homicide Monitoring Program in 2 years with a decade gap (1998/1999–2007/2008), and it classified 73 of all 238 alcohol‐related incidents by direct or indirect relation to public nightlife settings. Results: Related homicides in these years were not highly concentrated in developed night‐time economies, but more spread outside major nightlife zones. Indirectly related killings were even more dispersed and included more women victims killed in domestic settings. Discussion and Conclusions: There is a consistent though dispersed relationship between heavy public drinking at night and homicide. Concerns about homicide and night‐time drinking leisure with mostly male victims attacked in well‐known areas of busy city nightlife, must also consider the broader gendered patterns of ‘flow on’ nightlife‐related incidents, including fatal semi‐private and domestic violence that is indirectly but importantly related to drinking and alcohol purchase in public commercial nightlife.