A Place of Last Drink Initiative: Effects on Various Types of Crime

Place of last drink (POLD) is a law enforcement strategy designed to decrease the service of alcohol to intoxicated patrons (i.e., overservice). When officers respond to an alcohol-related incident, they inquire about and record the place where the involved individuals last drank alcohol; this information can help identify licensed alcohol establishments that show a pattern of overserving alcohol. We evaluated the effects of a POLD initiative on various types of crime.

The POLD initiative was conducted in the state of Minnesota (USA). We compared 26 intervention jurisdictions to 26 matched comparisons. Outcomes were six crime measures (e.g., driving under the influence, violent, nonviolent). Predictors were levels of participation and implementation of POLD. We fit a separate Poisson regression model for each crime outcome and each predictor.

In all models, we found little difference in crime rates between intervention and comparison jurisdictions. No effect on crime was observed for either participation or implementation levels of POLD. However, we found implementation levels were relatively low across jurisdictions.

This study adds to a very limited literature addressing the effects of POLD on public health harms such as crime. The particular POLD initiative did not appear to affect crime rates. We found POLD implementation levels showed considerable room for improvement and could help to explain some of the lack of effects of POLD on crime. More research is needed in additional localities and to assess whether specific aspects of implementation could help to strengthen POLD efforts.