Alcohol Availability and Promotion and Violent Crime

Aims. We investigated the role of the alcohol environment in explaining disparities in homicide rates among minorities in 10 U.S. cities using 2003-2005 data from the Malt Liquor and Homicide study. We hypothesized that 1) higher concentrations of African Americans would be associated with higher homicide rates, as well as higher alcohol and malt liquor availability and promotion, and that 2) the relationship between neighborhood racial/ethnic concentration and homicide would be attenuated by the greater alcohol and malt liquor availability and promotion in African American neighborhoods. Methods. Hypotheses were tested using separate Poisson, linear, and logistic regression models that corrected for temporal and spatial correlation. Results. We found higher concentrations of African Americans were associated with higher homicide rates as well as changes in alcohol availability, especially malt liquor availability. The promotion of malt liquor on storefronts was also significantly greater in African American than in other neighborhoods. Alcohol availability attenuated the relationship between racial/ethnic neighborhood concentration and homicide. Results are compared to our baseline findings. In addition, limitations and implications of our findings are discussed.