London cuts alcohol-related crime without Sydney-style lockouts

PAOLA TOTAROTHE
FEBRUARY 13, 2016
AUSTRALIAN
London Mayor Boris Johnson campaigns in a city wine shop.
Walk the streets of London — from the 24-hour buzz of Soho and the West End to the leafier residential neighbourhoods north and south of the River Thames — and you’ll find a pub on most corners. There are 7000 in the British capital alone, compared with 6000 in the whole of Australia.
On Friday and Saturday nights, especially if the weather’s fine, drinkers inevitably spill outdoors on to the pavements and streets, pint and wine glasses in hand. It’s not unusual to see windowsills and neighbouring walls turned into makeshift tables, and if local traffic allows it, people will even park their bums kerbside for a drink and a chat.
In residential neighbourhoods, 10pm is pumpkin hour: everyone moves inside, reminded quietly by the publican of the need for neighbourly respect, and generally it happens without fuss.
As a new arrival from Sydney in 2008, I remember being amazed at just how relaxed the pub culture — and London’s police — seemed to be, from the publican who cheerily dispensed takeaway plastic cups to those who hadn’t finished their drinks by closing time to the laissez-faire attitude of many publicans who allowed patrons to bring their own foods — from kebabs to pizza — as accompaniment for their drinks.
Londoners’ love of their booze was well illustrated in May 2008 when Boris Johnson, the city’s newly elected Tory Mayor, implemented his long-promised ban on drinking on buses and the Tube. An impromptu citywide “farewell to public drinking” party erupted on the underground; videos of the revel went viral and it is still spoken about with nostalgia.
Alcohol is everywhere and easy to buy in Britain. Supermarkets sell it, as do grocery shops and corner stores. Home Office statistics for 2013 showed there were 204,400 premises licensed to sell booze in England and Wales, 8900 of them with 24-hour permissions.
During the 2014 World Cup, when England was scheduled to play, licensing laws in the city were relaxed, not tightened. The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and Prince William and Kate Middletown’s wedding day elicited a similar response: Londoners were allowed to carry on into the night, unfettered by closing times.
Every weekend, 225,000 visitors pour into Leicester Square, focal point of the city’s night-life. Indeed, the West End, including nearby Piccadilly Circus, is home to more than 3000 licensed premises and pubs, giving it the dubious honour of being the most heavily licensed district in Britain. Not surprisingly, large numbers of people plus lots of pubs and clubs add up to high figures for reported crime: there are almost as many reported crimes a year in the West End as there are in the city centres of Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and Birmingham combined.
No Sydney-style lockouts here, though.
London council authorities as well as the police accept that alcohol consumption is a major part of what they call the night-time economy, estimated to be worth £66 billion ($134bn) to the nation as a whole and bringing hundreds of millions to the capital itself. A big city’s buzz, they argue, is not only about its cultural and historical attractions but its vitality at street level, ease of transport, good food and booze — as well as a vibrant night-life.
In Amsterdam, Mirik Milan is the city’s first Night Mayor, responsible for bringing city authorities together with night-time businesses, pubs and bars, the creative industries, and police and emergency services. When problems arise in the daytime, he argues, authorities respond by bringing together institutions and experts to create responsive, bespoke policy. “Traffic accidents for example: we look at and try new things on an evidence basis. When the night is involved and there are problems we all acknowledge exist, things like alcohol-based violence, too often the answer is just to stop the activity. But we know that does not work.”
Paris, Toulouse and Nantes now have night mayors, and Berlin and London are also considering the idea.
For the police and medics at the frontline of alcohol-related harm in London, it is not one size fits all, either. London’s boroughs are constantly experimenting, testing, trialling new harm minimisation measures.
In 2014, London’s Met Police launched the West End Impact Zone project based on New York’s successful push to stymie booze-fuelled violence in Times Square. A squad of 100 hand-picked, specialist officers now go on micro-patrols in the West End, entrusted solely with fostering safety, camaraderie and a peaceful departure from the area’s bars and clubs after closing time.
A mobile police station is staffed in Leicester Square and trouble spots are monitored carefully in tandem with local business owners, many of them equipped with direct radio links to the police. The preference, says the project chief, Inspector Matt Butterworth, is for prevention and safe dispersal over arrest. Early figures point to an impressive 27 per cent drop in “violence with injury” crimes in a 12-month period.
“The policing challenges are these alcohol-related crimes and these figures mean 695 fewer victims,” Butterworth tells Inquirer.
“But we also saw a 26 per cent fall in robberies and theft from the person.
“I am a strong believer in evidence-based statistics,” the inspector says, “(and) these are the most recent from our database.”
It’s not all smiling bobbies, however.
Tough new sentencing powers — pretty much creating compulsory sobriety orders — also have been put in place. These allow courts to compel offenders found guilty of drink driving, assault or drunk and disorderly conduct to abstain from alcohol for a fixed period of up to 120 days.
This means regular testing via a transdermal alcohol monitoring device in the form of a tag fitted around the ankle.
Offenders are held responsible for the consequences of their actions, not society at large.
Alcohol has been with us for millennia, say those at London’s coalface.
Locking down the night-life of an entire city to prevent the violence of a few is futile but, more significantly, it is simply unfair.
“And anyway, Londoners would riot,” jokes one officer, “And we wouldn’t want that.”