By Pennsylvania Governor’s Center for Local Government Services  

The intent of this study is to examine policing options for Bath Borough in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. Currently, the Pennsylvania State Police provide police service to Bath Borough’s 2,808 residents. In 2018, Bath Borough elected to leave the Colonial Regional Police Department as a member municipality and rely on the State for police coverage. Bath Borough did have a stand-alone, municipal police department from 1959 to 1995 until opting to join the Colonial Regional Police Department. After five years of Pennsylvania State Police service, the Bath Borough Council wishes to evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency and economics of its current police services. The study was initiated at the request of the elected officials from the Bath Borough. After a review of a comprehensive Request for Proposal for Police Services Study, the officials made their request via the submission of an official “Letter of Intent” to representatives of the Governor’s Center for Local Government Services (hereafter referred to as the GCLGS), located in the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED). The Letter of Intent officially requested that a study be conducted by the GCLGS and, furthermore, recognized that the municipality was not obligated or bound by the results of the study in any way. It is often difficult for small municipalities with limited resources to positively impact problems faced in the community, especially public safety. It has become necessary in many locations to consider ways to improve police service while stabilizing current and future costs. To this end, many smaller jurisdictions rely on outsourcing public safety duties, through contracted police service, relying on the Pennsylvania State Police or joining a regional police department. The concept of regional and/or contractual policing is one option that numerous municipalities currently participate in and one that many municipalities in Pennsylvania are now exploring. Success of regional departments often-times hinges on the cooperation and partnership fostered by each participating municipality and should not reflect on the police services provided. The last and most expensive option is to form a stand-alone, municipal police department to serve only the residents of the municipality. Presented in this study is information to help Bath Borough make a decision that is in the best interest of the community. Information collected and provided by the local officials, the GCLGS, and other government sources were used to determine the feasibility of police coverage options. Several options for police service have been explored and recommendations have been made. On behalf of the GCLGS, Chief David A. Mettin, Police Peer Consultant, would like to thank all the local government officials and the appointed employees for their excellent cooperation and assistance in completing this study of the Bath Borough.

Harrisburg: Governor's Office, 2023. 53p.

By Mélanie S.S. Seabrook, Alex Luscombe, Nicole Balian, Aisha Lofters, Flora I. Matheson, Braden G. O’neill, Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, Navindra Persaud, Andrew D. Pinto

This longitudinal study found no consistent correlations between increased police spending and municipal crime rates.

The analysis found that police services are a top budget priority in most municipalities, with up to 26 percent of total expenditures allocated to police. However, the findings revealed net increases in per capita spending are not associated with larger reductions in crime rates.

The authors examined budgets of 20 urban municipalities in Canada: Toronto, Montreal, Peel Region, Calgary, York Region, Edmonton, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Waterloo Region, Surrey, Quebec City, Hamilton, Halifax, Laval, London, Gatineau, Saskatoon, Burnaby, and Longueuil.

The study looked at police funding and how it varies across Canadian municipalities over a long period of time. The data from 2010 to 2020 showed wide differences in spending. For example, Vancouver spent more than double per capita on policing in 2019 than Quebec City, highlighting the complexity of the interactions between crime rates and police funding.

Other studies have also had mixed results regarding the relationship between police funding and crime. A A 2014 found no clear relationship between crime rates and per capita police expenditures in Canadian provinces, and a 2015 studyof 50 Canadian municipalities found that higher spending on police was associated with higher rates of violent crime, but the direction of the relationship was not established.

Research on police funding is limited in Canada, partly due to the lack of publicly available data on police spending. The study calls for improved publishing of police expenditure data, and for future research to examine whether funding decisions may be based on past crime rates and explore whether investments in police impact future crime rates.

Although the authors do not make specific policy recommendations regarding police budgets, the findings raise questions about the reasoning for such vast differences in police funding across the country despite overall downward crime rates.

Canadian Public Policy, Volume 49 Issue 4, December 2023, pp. pp. 383-398

By Ella Busch and Jacob Ware    

In an ever-evolving technological landscape, digital disinformation is on the rise, as are its political consequences. In this policy brief, we explore the creation and distribution of synthetic media by malign actors, specifically a form of artificial intelligence-machine learning (AI/ML) known as the deepfake. Individuals looking to incite political violence are increasingly turning to deepfakes– specifically deepfake video content–in order to create unrest, undermine trust in democratic institutions and authority figures, and elevate polarised political agendas. We present a new subset of individuals who may look to leverage deepfake technologies to pursue such goals: far right extremist (FRE) groups. Despite their diverse ideologies and worldviews, we expect FREs to similarly leverage deepfake technologies to undermine trust in the American government, its leaders, and various ideological ‘out-groups.' We also expect FREs to deploy deepfakes for the purpose of creating compelling radicalising content that serves to recruit new members to their causes. Political leaders should remain wary of the FRE deepfake threat and look to codify federal legislation banning and prosecuting the use of harmful synthetic media. On the local level, we encourage the implementation of “deepfake literacy” programs as part of a wider countering violent extremism (CVE) strategy geared towards at-risk communities. Finally, and more controversially, we explore the prospect of using deepfakes themselves in order to “call off the dogs” and undermine the conditions allowing extremist groups to thrive.  

The Hague?:  International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), 2023.

By Kristen M. Budd 

Report examines misconceptions around crimes of a sexual nature that contribute to the rise in imprisonment rates and the lengthening of sentences, and offers recommendations for reform.  

Washington DC: The Sentencing Project, 2024. 14p.

By Brendan O'Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi

Crime and policing activities routinely involve interactions between strangers and require the interacting parties to make highly consequential decisions under time pressure. Under such conditions, stereotypes based on visual or other cues can influence behavior. This review considers the role of stereotypes in shaping the manner in which such interactions proceed and the likelihood with which they occur in the first place. Our focus is primarily on robbery, murder, police stops and searches, and the use of deadly force, but the arguments apply more generally. We also consider how stereotypes can become entrenched through the behavioral changes they induce, given large differences across offenses in rate of arrest and prison admission.

Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7, Page 383 - 401

By Amanda Starc and Thomas G. Wollmann

Entry represents a fundamental threat to cartels engaged in price fixing. We study the extent and effect of this behavior in the largest price fixing case in US history, which involves generic drugmakers. To do so, we link information on the cartel’s internal operations to regulatory filings and market data. We find that collusion induces significant entry, which in turn reduces prices. However, regulatory approvals delay most entrants by 2-4 years. We then estimate a structural model to assess counterfactual policies. We find that reducing regulatory delays by just 1-2 years equates to consumer compensating variation of $597 million-$1.52 billion.

Chicago: Becker Friedman Institute, University of Chicago, 2022. 54p.

By Sara Bourdeau,

At the direction of Sheriff Walt McNeil, the Leon County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) began a review of data related to the 141 homicides recorded in Leon County from 2015-2020.A The purpose of this exploratory project was to gain a better understanding of the commonalities between the people, conditions, and circumstances contributing to the incidents. The Anatomy of a Homicide Project goals included: 1. Examining commonalities of homicide victims and offenders. 2. Identifying underlying issues, such as adverse childhood experiences (ACE), which may have contributed to or resulted in the homicides. 3. Understanding the various behavioral, social, environmental, economic, or situational factors experienced by both victims and offenders and how these factors may be correlated to the homicides. 4. Identifying commonalities in location, time, and methods by which homicides are committed. 5. Understanding motivational factors contributing to the homicides. 6. Identifying intelligence and investigative gaps and methods to better collect this data in the future. 7. Developing recommendations for targeted actions to mitigate contributing factors and prevent future homicides. The social, emotional, and financial costs of homicide for victims and offenders, the criminal justice system, the health care system, and society in general, far exceed those of other crimes. One study estimated the cost of one (1) murder to be 38 times higher than rape, 51 times higher than an armed robbery, and 119 times higher than an aggravated assault.1 Prevention of homicides is a top priority for the Leon County Sheriff’s Office. Additional research is needed to fully diagnose the problem and move forward with a series of people, place, and behavior-based strategies. When treated as a public health problem, using a scientific epidemiological approach, homicides can be prevented.2 It will take an ALLin community working together with focus, fairness, and a balanced approach of prevention and enforcement. The Leon County Sheriff’s Office dedicates this report to the victims of the homicides which occurred in Leon County from 2015-2020 and the families, friends, and neighborhoods impacted by these tragedies. While we will never fully understand the circumstances of these events, we will build on what we have learned by advocating for additional research, improved data collection and analysis, increased collaboration and information sharing between agencies, providers, and the community, and solutions which are both evidence-based and community informed.

2021 94p.

By Robert J. Sampson† and Brian L. Levy

A longstanding tradition of research linking neighborhood disadvantage to higher rates of violence is based on the characteristics of where people reside. This Essay argues that we need to look beyond residential neighborhoods to consider flows of movement throughout the wider metropolis. Our basic premise is that a neighborhood’s well-being depends not only on its own socioeconomic conditions but also on the conditions of neighborhoods that its residents visit and are visited by—connections that form through networks of everyday urban mobility. Based on the analysis of large-scale urban-mobility data, we find that while residents of both advantaged and disadvantaged neighborhoods in Chicago travel far and wide, their relative isolation by race and class persists. Among large U.S. cities, Chicago’s level of racially segregated mobility is the second highest. Consistent with our major premise, we further show that mobility-based socioeconomic disadvantage predicts rates of violence in Chicago’s neighborhoods beyond their residence-based disadvantage and other neighborhood characteristics, including during recent years that witnessed surges in violence and other broad social changes. Racial disparities in mobility-based disadvantage are pronounced—more so than residential neighborhood disadvantage. We discuss implications of these findings for theories of neighborhood effects on crime and criminal justice contact, collective efficacy, and racial inequality

University of Chicago Law Review, U Chi L Rev > Vol. 89 (2022) > Iss. 2

By The Asian Racing Federation Council on Anti-illegal Betting & Related Financial Crime

The purpose of this report is to explain how blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are being used in the illegal betting industry in Asia. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have been widely adopted in the betting industry in the form of payments, betting applications built on blockchain technology and to move funds. The emergence of this technology is a threat to legal betting because of the intrinsic features of many cryptocurrencies, such as: facilitating avoidance of anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) procedures by betting operators; circumvention by operators of international betting regulatory and licensing requirements; and instantaneous and anonymous cross-border transactions from bettors and operators. All of these features are attractive to bettors and operators in jurisdictions where online betting is illegal and/or restricted. Regulators in many jurisdictions have also been slow to keep up with the growth of blockchain,1 creating loopholes exploited by organised crime. International law enforcement and anti-money laundering bodies have highlighted that blockchain and cryptocurrencies facilitate illicit activities including illegal betting and money laundering. 2 As a measure of the growth of cryptocurrency in betting, Bitcoin is now accepted on at least 127 offshore sports betting websites and 284 online casinos, which is a seven- and 13-fold increase respectively since 2018.3 In addition to Bitcoin, at least 780 offshore websites accept one or more of the five biggest cryptocurrencies,4 and most of these websites accept players from jurisdictions such as Hong Kong (83%), Australia (78%), Japan (92%) and Singapore (82%). 5 Cryptocurrencies further facilitate illegal betting by giving the operators of illegal bookmaking syndicates and related entities such as Macau casino junket operators a means of transferring money without detection in order to offshore the criminal proceeds of their illegal betting operations, settle payments with customers, and pay employees in overseas illegal betting hubs such as the Philippines. For these reasons they have also been enthusiastically adopted by entities linked to the junket industry.

The Asian Racing Federation Council. 2021. 12p.

By KPMG

This report of key findings (the 'Report') has been prepared by KPMG LLP. The Report was commissioned by Philip Morris Limited and Imperial Tobacco Australia Limited, described in this Important Notice and in this Report as together the 'beneficiaries', on the basis set out in a private contract agreed between the beneficiaries and KPMG LLP dated 29 November 2021 . This report has been prepared on the basis of fieldwork carried out between 01 December 2021 and 14 April 2022. The Report has not been updated for subsequent events or circumstances. Information sources, the scope of our work, and scope and source limitations are set out in the footnotes and methodology contained within this Report. The scope of our work, information sources used, and any scope and source limitations were fixed by agreement with the beneficiaries. We have satisfied ourselves, where possible, that the information presented in this Report is consistent with the information sources used, but we have not sought to establish the reliability of the information sources by reference to other evidence. We relied upon and assumed without independent verification, the accuracy and completeness of information available from public and third party sources. This Report is not written for the benefit any other party other than the beneficiaries. In preparing this Report we have not taken into account the interests, needs, or circumstances of any specific party, other than the beneficiaries. This Report is not suitable to be relied on by any party (other than· the beneficiaries), Any person or entity ( other than the beneficiaries) who chooses to rely on this Report (or any part of it) will do so at their own risk. To the fullest extent permitted by law, KPMG LLP does not assume any responsibility and will not accept any liability in respect of this Report other than to the beneficiaries. Without limiting the general statement above, although we have prepared this Report in agreement with the beneficiaries, this Report has not been prepared for the benefit of any other manufacturer of tobacco products nor for any other person or entity who might have ari interest in the matters discussed in this Report, including for example those who work in_ or monitor the tobacco or public health sectors or those who provide goods or services to those who operate in those sectors.

KPMG: 2022. 70p.

By BIS OXFORD ECONOMICS

The consumption of Illicit tobacco has become a substantial problem for Australia in recent years. With illicit tobacco offering higher profit margins than illegal drugs such as cocaine, it presents several significant problems for government and society, including: - depriving the government of tax revenues, reducing its ability to deliver basic services and valuable social programmes; - displacing legal activity within the retail, wholesale and logistics industries; and - corrupting institutions, enabling money laundering, and providing revenues for organised crime, including potentially financing terrorist activities. This study by BIS Oxford Economics, commissioned by British American Tobacco Australia (BATA), provides information on several key issues, namely: - assessment of the value of the legal supply chain; - estimation of the tax and industry; - legal economy losses to illicit operators; and - examination of the harms caused by illicit tobacco trade

Sydney: BIS Oxford Economics, 2021. 43p.

By Saana Rikkilä, Pirjo Jukarainen, Vesa MuttilainenNordic Council of Ministers

Nordic countries are viewed as having low levels of corruption. However, Nordic businesses can be exploited in corruption or money laundering schemes. The KORPEN project (Korruption i samband med näringsverksamhet i Norden) was funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers, coordinated by the Ministry of Justice, Finland and implemented by the Police University College. The project concludes that anti-corruption and anti-money laundering (AML) efforts share the same features and actors but are still rather separated. Some shared methods could be utilised in combatting both crimes. In general, the AML frameworks are more structured, whereas corruption and bribery are not viewed as such a serious issue in the Nordic countries. There are incidents in the Nordic region of interconnected corruption and money laundering. New risk assessment approaches and technology solutions could be of help.

Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2022. 104p.

By Kay Cook, Adrienne Byrt, Rachael Burgin, Terese Edwards, Ashlea Coen, Georgina Dimopoulos

This report draws on post-separation lived experience to demonstrate the ways that the Australian Child Support Scheme can be used and abused to jeopardise the financial safety of recipient parents and their children. This abuse primarily affects women, who continue to carry the burden of unpaid care work in Australia (and internationally) and are overrepresented as victim-survivors of family violence.

In this report, the authors explore the ways that the Child Support Scheme can be used to financially abuse women, and the devastating impacts of this abuse on mothers’ and children’s lives. The findings show that separated mothers endure lasting impacts to their financial security, emotional and mental wellbeing, food security and housing safety through child support-facilitated financial abuse, sometimes long after separation.

Swinburne University of Technology, 2023. 75p.

By Richard Walton, Sophia Falkner and Benjamin Barnard

Research by Policy Exchange finds that fraud and error during the COVID-19 crisis will cost the UK Government in the region of £4.6 billion. The lower bound for the cost of fraud in this crisis is £1.3 billion and the upper bound is £7.9 billion, in light of total projected expenditure of £154.3 billion by the Government (excluding additional expenditure announced in the 8th July 2020 Economic Update). The true value may be closer to the upper bound, due to the higher than usual levels of fraud that normally accompany disaster management.

London: Policy Exchange, 2020. 78p.

By Kaitlyn Sill and Paul A. Haskins.

This article originally appeared in Police Chief and is reposted here with permission from the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

Hate crimes harm whole communities. They are message crimes that tell all members of a group—not just the immediate victims—that they are unwelcome and at risk.

The damage that bias victimization causes multiplies when victims and justice agencies don’t recognize or report hate crimes as such. In addition, in cases for which law enforcement agencies fail to respond to or investigate hate crimes, relationships between law enforcement and affected communities can suffer, and public trust in police can erode.[1]

While it is known that hate crimes are underreported throughout the United States, there is not a clear understanding of exactly why reporting rates are low, to what extent, and what might be done to improve them. An even more elementary question, with no single answer, is: What constitutes a hate crime? Different state statutes and law enforcement agencies have different answers to that question, which further complicates the task of identifying hate crimes and harmonizing hate crime data collection and statistics.

2021 Durham Community Gang Assessment

By Michelle Young

Beginning in 2021, the Durham Gang Reduction Strategy Steering Committee (GRSSC) commissioned an updated community gang assessment for Durham. The GRSSC community gang assessment used the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model Guide to Assessing Your Community’s Youth Gang Problem (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2009). This report presents five key findings and related recommendations arising from that exercise. Key finding 1: What is the most acute problem related to gangs/violence in Durham and where is it most acute? At least 12 census tracts/neighborhoods in Durham are currently affected by extremely high rates of violent person incidents (aggravated assault and homicide) that are up to 7.5 times higher than Durham’s overall rate per capita of these crimes. Eight of these census tracts have experienced high rates of violence since the last community gang assessment was conducted in Durham. Violence exposure in these areas is exacerbated by extreme poverty and exposure to other social vulnerabilities that have remained mostly unchanged since 2014. Key finding 2: Why are youth in Durham joining gangs? What risk factors locally must be addressed to keep youth out of gangs? Young people in Durham experience an elevated level of exposure to risk factors for gang involvement, including substance use, delinquency, the presence of gangs in their neighborhood and at school, family gang involvement, victimization, and exposure to violence. This level of risk exposure is higher for youth who enter the juvenile justice system and highest for gang involved individuals. Key finding 3: What is keeping young people in gangs? What must be addressed to help gang-involved individuals exit gangs? Research indicates that young people who join gangs become disconnected from mainstream pursuits. Gang involved individuals in Durham have difficulty exiting gangs because of high rates of school dropout, unemployment/underemployment, substance use, gang activity in the neighborhood, and a need to replace the social and emotional needs currently met by their gang. Key finding 4: How is this issue affecting the wider community? What should motivate policymakers to address the problem? People who live and work in Durham experience the gang issue very differently depending on their role and location. In some neighborhoods, gangs are deeply imbedded in the neighborhood’s culture which plays a key role in the decision to join a gang in Durham. Other neighborhoods experience gang issues indirectly. However, surveys across constituency groups indicates that the widespread nature of gang activity and community violence in Durham reduces quality of life for residents across the community. Key finding 5: How well is the current response to gangs working? What should be done differently in the future? All constituency groups that participated in this study described low levels of satisfaction with the current response to gangs and identified specific deficits that have caused this dissatisfaction. These issues include a failure to address the underlying conditions that give rise to gangs, a lack of awareness about the current responses to gangs across constituency groups, lack of information about the results of current strategies, and concerns about criminal justice policies. Recommendations Recommendation 1: Implement intensive, place-based strategies to address underlying social conditions that increase the vulnerability of children and youth in the most violence affected census tracts to gang involvement Recommendation 2: Implement comprehensive, intensive, and neighborhood-based service delivery specifically for gang-involved individuals in the highest violence neighborhoods. Recommendation 3: Because of the elevated level of gang exposure/involvement and youth risk exposure locally, Durham policymakers should expand available gang prevention and intervention programming, localize these services in the most violence/gang affected census tracts, and prioritize these services for children and youth who are at the highest level of risk of involvement in violence and gangs Recommendation 4: More regularly collect and report data that reflects the progress of the community’s gang violence reduction efforts. Recommendation 5: Institute standardized performance measures to track reductions in violence and improve existing criminogenic social conditions at the census tract level and more regularly report the outcomes attained by gang prevention, intervention and desistance strategies to policymakers and the community at the census tract level.

Wake Forest, NC: Michelle Young Consulting, 2022. 257p.

By Sarah Frisby-Osman and Jane L. Wood

Mental health difficulties, conduct problems, and emotional maladjustment predict a range of negative outcomes, and this may include gang involvement. However, few studies have examined how behavioral, mental health, socio-cognitive, and emotional factors all relate to adolescent gang involvement. This study examined 91 adolescents to compare non-gang with gang-involved youth on their conduct problems, emotional distress, guilt-proneness, anxiety and depression, and use of moral disengagement and rumination. Analyses revealed that gang-involved youth had higher levels of anxiety, depression, moral disengagement, and rumination. Gang-involved youth also had higher levels of conduct disorder and exposure to violence, but they did not differ from non-gang youth on levels of emotional distress and guiltproneness. Discriminant function analysis further showed that conduct problems, moral disengagement, and rumination were the most important predictors of gang involvement. Discussion focuses on how intervention and prevention efforts to tackle gang involvement need to consider the mental health and behavioral needs of gang-involved youth. Further research is also needed to build an evidence base that identifies the cause/effect relationship between mental health and gang involvement to inform the best practice when tackling gang membership

Youth Justice 2020, Vol. 20(1-2) 93–112

By William J. Aceves

On the eve of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, a small group of gang leaders and community activists drafted an agreement to curtail violence in south Los Angeles. Several gangs in Watts accepted the truce and established a cease-fire agreement. By most accounts, the 1992 Watts Gang Treaty succeeded in reducing gang violence in Los Angeles. Local activists attributed the reduction in shootings to the Treaty. Even law enforcement officials grudgingly recognized the Treaty’s contribution to reducing gang violence and a corresponding decrease in homicides. The origins of the Watts Gang Treaty can be traced to gang leaders recognizing that the devastating struggle between rival gangs was analogous to a military conflict—complete with “no-man’s land,” assault weapons, targeted killings, and civilian casualties—and, therefore, it required a diplomatic solution. Seeking inspiration from international conflict resolution efforts, gang members looked to the 1949 Armistice Agreement adopted by Egypt and Israel to end the Arab-Israeli War. The drafters of the Watts Gang Treaty mirrored the key provisions of the Armistice Agreement, including a cease-fire agreement and other confidence-building measures. The drafters then built a social movement to support the Treaty. This Article examines the origins, impact, and legacy of the Watts Gang Treaty. It also pursues a prescriptive agenda. It supports the study of hidden history that runs counter to the common narrative of power and privilege in the United States. Moreover, this Article argues that social movements can achieve meaningful change even in the face of poverty, violence, and structural racism.

Harvard Civil Rights- Civil Liberties Law Review (CR-CL), Vol. 57, 2022. 63p.

By Jessica Reichert, Sharyn Adams, Morgan McGuirk,

Lauren Weisner

Court diversion programs for individuals convicted for drug crimes have been found to reduce recidivism and be cost effective. Some courts have established programs offering alternative sentencing and specialized programming for persons convicted of felony drug offenses. We conducted a process evaluation of a court diversion program for individuals charged with a first-time felony drug possession offense in DuPage County, Illinois called the First Offender Call Unified for Success (FOCUS) program. We examined the program’s development, operations, and participants, as well as collected feedback from the participants and probation and court staff involved in the program. We conducted interviews, administered surveys, and analyzed administrative data. As of April 2021, there were 231 active participants; a majority of participants were White males with a Class 4 felony drug possession charge. Thirty-nine participants had successfully completed the two-year program and three were unsuccessful. Overall, participants and clients provided positive feedback on the program. Based on our findings, we offered several recommendations to improve program operations.

Chicago: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority 2022. 57p.

By John Woodhouse

There is no general prohibition on drinking in the street but certain offences relating to alcohol may be committed in “public places” (this generally means “any place to which the public have access, whether on payment or otherwise” (the Licensing Act 1872 and subsequent Licensing Acts)).

Councils can use public spaces protection orders to restrict the consumption of alcohol in a public space where it is associated with anti-social behaviour. It is an offence to fail to comply with a request to stop drinking or to surrender alcohol in a controlled drinking area.

The police can disperse individuals engaged in anti-social behaviour where alcohol is a factor. It is an offence to fail to comply with a direction to leave an area.

Other offences include being drunk and disorderly in a public place and being drunk in any highway or other public place. This Briefing refers to the law in England and Wales.

Research Briefing. London: UK House of Commons, 2023. 11p.