New Zealand: Alcohol-Fuelled Nightlife Crime
The latest police victim statistics for Otago – a southeastern region on New Zealand’s South Island – reveal a gloomy reality of alcohol-fuelled nightlife crime in southern eastern New Zealand.
The data shows that between July 2016 to June 2017, 5500 victims of crime reported incidents. The incidents included serious assaults, sexual attacks, thefts, robberies and burglaries. The figures show a significant proportion of crime occurred between midnight and 4am on Saturday and Sunday. Many of those incidents are directly attributable to alcohol.
Whenever violence flares up, there is the potential for death or permanent and life-changing injury. Otago police say that any injuries inflicted as a result of alcohol-fuelled violence are unacceptable.
Alcohol-attributable violence is pervasive, affecting both stinger who are in the wrong place at the wrong time as well as family and friends, for instance in sexual assaults or domestic violence.
And police carrying out their work, trying to ensure the safety of the public, are put at risk, too.
There are, of course, alcohol economic costs, for instance from cleaning up the mess of vomit, urine, broken glass and other damage, the regular weekend detritus. Then there are the significant costs to economic productivity, public health and the justice system.
Political measures to control alcohol consumption hours, limit alcohol availability and increase alcohol pricing are all cost-effective and should reimplemented, but they regularly hampered or watered down, and sectors of the community seem keen to blame another, writes the Otago Daily Times.