- Title
- Costing alcohol-related assault in the night-time economy from a societal perspective: The case of Central Sydney
- Creator
- Deeming, Simon; Kypri, Kypros
- Relation
- NHMRC.APP1041867 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1041867
- Relation
- Drug and Alcohol Review Vol. 40, Issue 5, p. 779-799
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/dar.13242
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- Introduction: There is a concern in many countries about violence from late-night alcohol sales and appropriate regulatory responses. However, economic losses arising from this activity rarely feature in public debate. Credible estimates are lacking because economic evaluations have not taken a ‘societal perspective’, costing health, policing and criminal justice outcomes. Our aims were to: (i) develop an analytic model capable of informing cost–benefit analysis of policy changes; and (ii) estimate costs of alcohol-related assault (ARA) in a major city. Methods: We employed decision-analytic cohort models of health and judicial consequences of ARA in Sydney, Australia. We constructed two 6-branch decision-analytic models of patient and offender pathways through the health and judicial systems. We produced overall estimates and analysed their sensitivity to key assumptions. Results: Combining results from a Health model comprising 40 pathways and 137 cost events, and a Justice model comprising 20 pathways and 48 cost events, yielded an overall cost estimate of $85 093 per ARA, of which 64% was health-related, while 36% was justice-related. Estimates were sensitive to values assigned for ‘pain, suffering, morbidity and wellbeing’, and to costs of incarceration. Health service-related costs accounted for 1.3% of the total. Discussion and Conclusion: The costs of ARA are significant and dominated by incidents in which a victim does not necessarily receive acute medical care but suffers loss in quality-of-life, and where a perpetrator is processed through the criminal justice system. Being derived transparently, within a theoretical framework, the estimates are adaptable to inform cost–benefit analyses of policy options in Australia and other countries.
- Subject
- alcohol; assault; night-time; cost; economy
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1474922
- Identifier
- uon:49417
- Identifier
- ISSN:0959-5236
- Language
- eng
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