Alcohol and Drug Abuse Statistics Facts About Addiction

Alcohol outlet agglomerations were compared to regional violence counts using a foci cluster test specified as the sum of the differences between observed and expected assault counts at each location weighted by alcohol related crime statistics the exposure to alcohol outlet agglomeration. In this sense, the statistic explained a distance decay effect identifying the spatial extent at which the observed number of assaults exceed the expected 114. Changes in recording practices have led to discontinuity in police recorded crime figures, especially for violent crime over the last 10 years. Most recently, in May 2023, changes were made to the Home Office Counting Rules for conduct crimes (stalking, harassment, and coercive and controlling behaviour). Crime statistics are based on the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and police recorded crime. CSEW estimates are accredited official statistics and were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in October 2024.

Alcohol-Related Crimes and Offenses

Intoxication can make an individual loud, aggressive, belligerent, and disruptive. In order to limit damage, most jurisdictions want to limit alcohol use to designated areas like restaurants, bars, and homes. Public intoxication is often problematic to prove from a legal perspective, and many jurisdictions use this crime primarily to remove belligerent drunks from public places and sequester them in a jail cell until they sober up.

The CSEW shows that fewer than one in six victims of rape or assault by penetration reported the crime to the police (Table 13 of our Nature of sexual assault by rape or penetration, England and Wales dataset). In year ending (YE) September 2024, people aged 16 years and over experienced an estimated 1.1 million incidents of CSEW violence with or without injury, no statistically significant change compared with the previous year. The police recorded 550 homicide offences in year ending (YE) September 2024, a 4% decrease from 572 offences in the previous year. The homicide rate was 9.0 per 1 million people, down from 9.6 in YE September 2023. Knives or sharp instruments were used in 43% of homicides, similar to the previous year (44%). In this chapter, CSEW ‘alcohol-related’ violent incidents3 are defined as those violent incidents where the victim perceived the offender(s) to be under the influence of alcohol at the time of the incident.

Share of crimes which are alcohol-related

Globally, the age-standardized death rate has declined from approximately 40 deaths per 100,000 people in the early 1990s to 30 deaths per 100,000 in 2019. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), in its Global Burden of Disease study, provides estimates of the number of deaths attributed to the range of risk factors.5 In the visualization, we see the number of deaths per year attributed to each risk factor. This chart is shown for the global total but can be explored for any country or region using the « Change country or region » toggle.

Figure 5.1: Proportion of violent incidents where alcohol was likely to be a factor, by question, 2013/14 CSEW

Police data, however, can show trends in specific theft offences that are well reported and well recorded, such as burglary, and can highlight emerging trends. It includes crimes against all people (including those aged under 16 years and those not permanently resident in households), businesses and organisations, and society (such as drug and weapons possession), that come to the attention of the police. Whilst large proportions of victims in both alcohol-related (78%) and non-alcohol-related (81%) violent incidents reported having experienced an emotional reaction, the severity of the reactions differed. Victims in alcohol-related violent incidents were less likely to have been emotionally affected ‘very much’ overall (in 19% of alcohol-related violent incidents) than victims in non-alcohol-related violent incidents (29%; Figure 5.12).

Child Neglect and Abuse

There were no statistically significant changes for YE September 2024 compared with the previous year in any of the subcategories of theft. This included theft from the person, other theft of personal property, domestic burglary, other household theft, vehicle-related theft and bicycle theft. The prevalence of CSEW violence with and without injury was 0.5% where the perpetrator was an acquaintance and 0.8% where the perpetrator was a stranger in YE September 2024. The majority of knife-enabled crimes were assault with injury, and assault with intent to cause serious harm (43%), and robbery offences (43%).

• In the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and many European countries, alcohol is responsible for around a third of all traffic deaths.
• There are some further offences recorded by the police as public order offences that can involve an element of violence, though not directed at an individual victim.
• It tracks long-term crime trends from year ending (YE) December 1981 to YE September 2024.
• In fact, no other substance increases the chances of homicides more than alcohol.
• We also find correlates in drinking patterns when we look at groupings of income, education or work status.
• Their study underscores the importance of basing interventions on a clearly-articulated rationale that links components of the intervention to specific outcomes 41.

There were an estimated 9.5 million incidents of CSEW headline crime in YE September 2024, a 12% increase compared with YE September 2023 (8.5 million incidents), mainly because of a 19% rise in fraud (to around 3.9 million incidents). Roughly 40% of convicted murderers were under the influence of alcohol when they took someone else’s life. Not only does alcohol make it more likely that an individual will commit violent acts, it also escalates the severity of those acts. A person who may have stopped an incident at aggravated assault while sober may continue the assault until it progresses to murder while drunk.

• The CSEW is better for tracking long-term trends in violence with and without injury, theft offences, criminal damage, fraud and computer misuse, while police data are preferred for homicide, offences involving weapons, and robbery.
• Moreover, parents or guardians struggling with alcoholism are less likely to be directly involved in their children’s upbringing, thereby increasing the chances of sexual abuse by family members or strangers.
• Just over half of these incidents occurred within a licensed premise (30% ‘inside a nightclub’, 25% inside a ‘pub, bar or working men’s club’), while the remaining incidents occurred in locations outside but near the premises (Figure 5.9).
• Novel sources of spatial data are going to create further opportunity to utilize non-traditional methods to study how the size and capacity of drinking establishments impacts consumption and ultimately crime, across space and through time.
• In year ending (YE) September 2024, 2.2% of people aged 16 years and over had experienced sexual assault (including attempted offences).
• The course of conduct or behaviour must comprise two or more occasions or events for an offence to be recorded by the police.

In YE September 2024, 24% of people thought ASB was a fairly or very big problem, and 8% felt their area had a high level of ASB. These trends have stayed consistent since YE March 2014, with little change each year. Bank and credit account fraud increased by 15% to about 2.2 million incidents, and consumer and retail fraud increased by 26% to about 1 million incidents. Around 2.9 million fraud incidents involved a loss, and victims were fully reimbursed in 1.9 million of these cases. Information on the investigative outcomes of crimes recorded by the police can be found in the Home Office’s Crime outcomes in England and Wales publication. The survey excludes crimes against commercial or public sector bodies, tourists, or those living in communal establishments (such as care homes, student halls of residence and prisons).

Discover how many people with alcohol use disorder in the United States receive treatment across age groups and demographics. Some people feel inhibited from alcohol and believe it’s acceptable to commit alcohol-related violence. In some cases, the effects are enhanced in the presence of other intoxicated people, and they antagonize each other.

Alcohol-related crimes (% of all crimes)

Stress, money trouble, professional instability and a host of other factors can influence the amount of alcohol a person consumes. However, alcoholism not only affects an individual, it impacts family members and friends – including children. Research studies have shown a link between parents who abuse alcohol and the risk of child neglect and abuse.

They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled « accredited official statistics ». Police recorded crime data are not designated as accredited official statistics. There have been general increases in police recorded sexual offences over the last decade, largely because of improvements in police recording practices. There was a 5% increase in YE September 2024 (to 199,445 offences), compared with the previous year (190,620 offences). Our headline CSEW crime measure captures theft offences, robbery, criminal damage, fraud, computer misuse, and violence with or without injury.

Once intoxicated, alcohol abusers tend to become unruly, aggressive, and disruptive, which increases the risks of avoidable injuries, accidents, and crimes. The results in the chart show the increased risk of developing alcohol dependency (we show results for illicit drug dependency in our topic page on drug use) for someone with a given mental health disorder (relative to those without). For example, a value of 3.6 for bipolar disorder indicates that illicit drug dependency became more than three times more likely in individuals with bipolar disorder than those without. The risk of an alcohol use disorder is highest in individuals with intermittent explosive disorder, dysthymia, ODD, bipolar disorder, and social phobia. In the chart, we see the relationship between average per capita alcohol consumption – in liters of pure alcohol per year – versus gross domestic product (GDP) per capita across countries. Long-run data on alcohol consumption from the United States gives us one perspective of drinking since 1850.