Yu Qingzhao, Scribner Richard, Carlin Brad, Theall Katherine, Simonsen Neal, Ghosh-Dastidar Bonnie, Cohen Deborah, Mason Karen
School of Public Health, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, LA 70112, USA.
Geospat Health. 2008 May;2(2):161-72. doi: 10.4081/gh.2008.240.
Many previous studies have suggested a link between alcohol outlets and assaultive violence. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of the "1992 Civil Unrest" in Los Angeles (which followed the "Rodney King incident"), in which many alcohol outlets were damaged leading to a decrease in alcohol outlet density, on crime. We leverage the natural experiment created by the closure of alcohol outlets in certain areas and not others to explore the effects of alcohol availability on assault crimes at the census tract level. We develop a hierarchical model that controls for important covariates (such as race and socio-economic status) and accounts for unexplained spatial and temporal variability. While our model is somewhat complex, its hierarchical Bayesian analysis is accessible via the WinBUGS software. Our results show that, keeping other effects fixed, the reduction in alcohol availability within a census tract was associated with a drop in the assaultive violence rate at the census tract level. Comparing several dual candidate changepoint models using the Deviance Information Criterion, the drop in assaultive violence rate is best seen as having occurred one year after the reduction in alcohol availability, with the effect lasting roughly five years. We also create maps of the fitted assault rates in Los Angeles, as well as spatial residual maps that suggest various spatially-varying covariates are still missing from our model.
许多先前的研究表明酒精销售点与攻击性暴力之间存在联系。在本文中，我们评估了洛杉矶“1992年社会动荡”（继“罗德尼·金事件”之后）对犯罪的影响，此次动荡中许多酒精销售点受损，导致酒精销售点密度下降。我们利用某些区域酒精销售点关闭而其他区域未关闭所形成的自然实验，来探究普查区层面酒精供应对攻击犯罪的影响。我们构建了一个分层模型，该模型控制了重要的协变量（如种族和社会经济地位），并考虑了无法解释的空间和时间变异性。虽然我们的模型有些复杂，但其分层贝叶斯分析可通过WinBUGS软件实现。我们的结果表明，在其他因素保持不变的情况下，普查区内酒精供应的减少与普查区层面攻击性暴力犯罪率的下降相关。使用偏差信息准则比较几个双候选变化点模型后发现，攻击性暴力犯罪率的下降在酒精供应减少一年后最为明显，且这种影响持续约五年。我们还绘制了洛杉矶拟合攻击率地图以及空间残差地图，这些地图表明我们的模型仍遗漏了各种空间变化的协变量。
