In Lancashire, Community Alcohol Networks (CANs) have been developed by the Trading Standards Alcohol and Tobacco team, in conjunction with Lancashire Constabulary, to adopt a partnership approach to reduce alcohol-related crime and problems amongst young people.
Lancashire have released a CAN Practitioner Toolkit and a CAN Problem Oriented Partnership report.
The project was established with the aims of reducing young people's access to alcohol in order to reduce risky drinking and alcohol fuelled anti social behaviour. It also aimed to reduce problems by tackling proxy purchasing through enhanced enforcement activity in identified hotspots. In addition it aimed to raise awareness of alcohol related health and social issues amongst young people, parents and the wider community.
Over 12 weeks the Community Alcohol Networks were claimed to have achieved:
- 51 per cent reduction in alcohol fuelled anti social behaviour
- violent crime has reduced by 22 per cent
- criminal damage has seen an 11 per cent reduction
The approach appears similar to Community Alcohol Partnerships (CAPs) which aims to tackle public underage drinking through co-operation between alcohol retailers and local stakeholders, such as Trading Standards, police, local authority licensing teams, schools and health networks. See here for a presentation on Islington Community Alcohol Partnership.
See here for a bank of local alcohol initaitives or an Alcohol Concern factsheet Alcohol, Crime and Disorder in the Night-time Economy [pdf], written by Dr Phil Hadfield (University of Leeds) and Dr Andrew Newton (University of Huddersfield).
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