Alcohol and crime are closely linked – in 2020 every fourth act of violence was committed under the influence of alcohol.
Eating – As adolescents aged 16 and over consume more alcohol, the number of crimes while drunk is skyrocketing, according to a recent study.
Participation in criminal offenses such as slight and serious bodily harm, vandalism and theft under the influence of alcohol increases by around 16 percent at the age of 16 – i.e. when the minimum age for the purchase of beer, wine and sparkling wine is exceeded, according to an evaluation by the RWI -Leibniz Institute in Essen.
The increase was observed in both young women and young men, with the latter committing 90 percent more crimes under the influence of alcohol, as stated in the work of Fabian Dehos, which is published in the “Journal of Health Economics” .
Especially on weekends, when the young people are not involved in a structured everyday school life, an increase in criminal offenses can be observed while drunk, according to Dehos. The study is based on surveys from the years 2005 to 2015, which the author put in relation to the police crime statistics for the same period.
The analysis also shows that adolescents in the high-consumption country of Germany, when they reach one of the world’s lowest age limits of 16 years, consume alcohol significantly more and significantly more frequently than before. In addition, from a critical alcohol level, the likelihood that young people will commit a crime for the first time increases, according to Dehos. “A higher minimum age for alcohol could help reduce the number of young people becoming criminals and at the same time protect their health in this important development phase,” he sums up.
Specialists, for example from crime prevention, have repeatedly demonstrated in studies the connection between alcohol consumption and the tendency to crime for different age groups and types of crime. In 2020 the Federal Criminal Police Office registered 198,684 suspects under the influence of alcohol. In the area of violent crime alone, around one in four suspects had drunk. dpa
