Alcohol and homicide in Australia

International research suggests alcohol consumption increases the number of homicides and that homicides involving alcohol differ significantly to non alcohol-related homicides.

The current study sought to build on the limited Australian research on alcohol-related homicide by examining solved homicides recorded in the National Homicide Monitoring Program over a six year period. Of the 1,565 homicides, nearly half (47%) of the incidents were classified as alcohol related and of those, over half involved both the victim and offender consuming alcohol prior to the incident. Similar to previous research, the analysis found victim, offender and incident characteristics differentiated alcohol-related homicides from other homicides.

Further analysis showed that the incident characteristics most clearly differentiate alcohol-related homicides, which highlights the crucial role situational and environmental factors play in precipitating alcohol-related homicide. A key finding, not found in earlier research, was that alcohol is equally likely to be implicated in intimate-partner homicides as it is in all other homicides. However, homicides involving women killing male intimate partners were far more likely to involve alcohol consumption by victim or offender or both, and that the overwhelming majority of Indigenous intimate-partner homicides were alcohol related.