Part I: Overview: The National Symposium on Alcohol Abuse and Crime

In the fall of 1997, Assistant Attorney General Laurie Robinson convened a federal interagency working group to plan a National Symposium on Alcohol Abuse and Crime. In the Assistant Attorney General's words, the symposium would "...reinforce what we all know and want to focus on--that the links between alcohol abuse and crime and what to do about this problem are of critical importance to the health and safety of America's communities."

Purpose and Focus

In the months preceding the symposium, held in Washington, D.C. on April 5 - 7, 1998, the interagency group identified key topics and speakers; structured the working sessions of the agenda; and--perhaps most importantly--carefully identified more than one hundred expert participants. Age, gender, and ethnic diversity--along with professional diversity--characterized the individuals who were ultimately invited to participate.

The specific purposes of the symposium were:

• To convene recognized leaders from the alcohol field including research, treatment, criminal justice, community and victim advocacy, and prevention;
• To provide a forum for these participants to engage in an honest and open discussion of our current knowledge of the relationships between alcohol abuse and crime in all of its dimensions, as well as the breadth and effectiveness of our current criminal justice and treatment responses to alcohol abuse and crime; and
• To provide advice and guidance to the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) regarding how it can best provide support to ongoing and emerging efforts to reduce alcohol-related crime and its consequences.

In order to focus the work of the symposium, the interagency planning group identified four specific topic areas around which the working groups were organized. The topics were:

• The role of alcohol in domestic violence and its implications for criminal justice interventions;
• Effective interventions for offender populations;
• Community-based responses and initiatives; and
• The underage use of alcohol.

Symposium Format

Participants were invited to join one of four working groups each organized around one of the primary topics listed above in the Purpose and Focus section. Each group was asked to identify the major problems in its area, summarize current criminal justice responses to those problems and what we know of their effectiveness, and develop a specific set of recommendations about actions the Office of Justice Programs can take to reduce alcohol-related crime and its consequences.

Plenary presentations, designed to provide participants with a common frame of reference for their discussions, supplemented the working group sessions. The presentations were representative of a wide variety of perspectives and covered the current state of knowledge on alcohol abuse and its relationship to crime; treatment approaches and their effectiveness; cultural and ethnic dimensions of alcohol abuse; the role of alcohol in domestic violence; community initiatives to address alcohol-related crimes; interventions within the correctional system; and the underage use of alcohol. The symposium agenda, which identifies plenary session topics as well as the presenters, is included as Appendix 1.

After two days of panel presentations and lively discussions, the four working groups formulated their recommendations and highlighted their priority recommendations in a presentation attended by all of the symposium participants and Attorney General Janet Reno.

Participants

The response to OJP's invitation to participate in the symposium was overwhelming. Ultimately, approximately 150 individuals, representing a broad variety of disciplines and perspectives, participated in the symposium. They included:

• Criminal justice officials from many different agencies including law enforcement personnel, judges from juvenile and adult courts as well as specialized alcohol and drug courts, prosecutors, jail administrators, and representatives from institutional and community based corrections agencies;
• Youth representatives;
• Representatives from collaborative community efforts to control alcohol-related crime including alcoholic beverage control agencies, the retail industry, and the alcohol beverage industry;
• Diverse public policy practitioners and advocates such as local elected officials, public health advocates, community organizers, and educators;
• Treatment and prevention specialists from the alcohol, substance abuse, and domestic violence arenas;
• Victim advocates including representatives of the domestic violence advocacy community;
• Researchers and evaluators; and
• Federal policy makers, funders, and program managers.

A complete listing of the symposium's participants is included as Appendix 2.

Major Themes of the Symposium's Recommendations

While the symposium participants generated hundreds of recommendations during the course of their discussions, this report presents a synthesis of the recommendations which fall most clearly within the purview of the Office of Justice Programs. There were several key themes that emerged with striking consistency in all four groups which provide a coherent framework for the numerous recommendations provided by the symposium participants.

• Alcohol is a drug that is closely linked with crime, particularly violent crime. As a result, it should have greater visibility in our efforts to deal with crime and violence. The four groups encouraged OJP to support initiatives which acknowledge alcohol as a drug and which target the crime related to alcohol abuse and its consequences.
• OJP can provide important leadership on this issue by continuing to emphasize the inclusion of alcohol in the dialogue about substance abuse, and to emphasize statistical and qualitative information about the high proportion of crime related to alcohol abuse.
• The problems of alcohol abuse and crime, by their nature, cross all of our traditional professional, jurisdictional, racial, ethnic, gender, and even generational boundaries. If we are to begin to address these problems more effectively, we must develop collaborative efforts--bringing together law enforcement, the courts, corrections agencies, treatment providers, victim advocates, community representatives, health professions, researchers, alcohol beverage control agencies, the alcohol beverage industry, the hospitality industry, youth, and others. Therefore, the four groups encouraged OJP to support initiatives which are based upon collaboration.
• Efforts to prevent and respond to alcohol-related crime must be sensitive to the communities and the cultural context in which they occur, and must be competent within those communities. It would be difficult to overestimate the strength of conviction which participants felt on this point whether in relationship to domestic violence, offender interventions, the underage use of alcohol, or community initiatives.
• The consequences of alcohol abuse and alcohol-related crime fall disproportionately upon communities in Indian Country. A Native American is 475% more likely to die of alcohol-related causes than is the average American. In addition, other conditions such as unemployment and family disruption that correlate highly with crime in all communities are experienced disproportionately in Indian Country. Prevention and intervention efforts regarding alcohol-related crime must be cognizant of these needs and the disproportionate impact of alcohol abuse and crime in Indian Country.
• One of the barriers impeding our progress in utilizing the knowledge that we do have is the gap that exists between research and practice. Each of the working groups at the symposium spoke passionately of the need to use the knowledge we have, to make it available to communities and practitioners as they mobilize their efforts to deal with alcohol abuse, and to share our knowledge about what works. The four working groups encouraged OJP to disseminate emerging research results widely and in a form that is accessible and understandable to the broader community. They also encouraged OJP to support research on the topic of alcohol abuse and crime in proportion to its importance as a drug of abuse--which is significant, and greater than many drugs of abuse which we research extensively.
• In its broadest sense, community involvement requires the participation of individuals who are most affected by a problem and its solution. The four working groups encouraged OJP to undertake initiatives in partnership with individuals and communities who are most influenced by alcohol abuse and crime. Youth, victims, racial and ethnic groups, and specific communities must be included and empowered to participate in the solutions to these problems.
• The working groups found the opportunity for dialogue at the symposium to be an important step forward in addressing the problem of alcohol abuse and crime. They encourage OJP to consider sponsoring further opportunities for collaborative discussions among diverse groups on the role of alcohol in domestic violence, effective interventions for offender populations, and the underage use of alcohol.

Organization of this Report

Each of the working groups at the symposium generated a set of discussion notes and an outline of recommendations. Parts II - V of this report are a synthesis of each group's discussions and recommendations. Major issues, problems, and needs are discussed as "Targets for Change" in each section and are followed by recommendations organized into categories. The report attempts to remove duplication, combine related recommendations, and to include primarily those recommendations which relate to OJP's areas of responsibility. Each group generated extensive recommendations regarding research--on research questions, research methods, and the dissemination of research results. To avoid repetition and highlight common themes, Part VI of the report incorporates recommendations on research from all four working groups.

Highlighted Recommendations

To fully appreciate the extent and complexity of the issues which participants discussed and the recommendations which they formulated, the reader is encouraged to review each of the following sections of this document. However, participants did highlight key recommendations for discussion with OJP during the symposium. These highlighted recommendations provide an overview of the full set of recommendations presented in Parts II - VI of this report.

The role of alcohol in domestic violence and its implications for criminal justice interventions

1. Conduct and support research on initiatives that foster linkages among community groups, service and treatment providers for domestic violence and alcohol problems, and the criminal justice system;

2. Increase funding and support for community-based, culturally competent programs that successfully integrate services across a system that is currently very fragmented;

3. Support screening for and assessment of alcohol use among all batterers who are in contact with the criminal justice system;

4. Ensure that non-coercive alcohol treatment options are available for women who are victims of domestic violence; and

5. Convene a similar symposium or focus group to look specifically at the links between domestic violence and alcohol abuse. There is still much learning to be shared from all sides, and more dialogue and exploration that need to happen before specific recommendations can be made with full agreement.

Effective interventions for correctional populations

1. Support the development of a comprehensive continuum of care that connects all elements of the treatment and criminal justice communities from arrest through discharge from the system;

2. Encourage the formulation of a common language for both treatment and criminal justice practitioners that adequately defines terms, articulates treatment goals, and adequately expresses agreed-upon standards of care;

3. Support the definition and dissemination of accepted "best" treatment and intervention practices that are culturally competent across all offender populations, including Native American populations;

4. Support the development and implementation of effective treatment strategies for offender populations who will be within the correctional system for only short periods of time, particularly jail populations; and

5. Encourage a more coordinated and accountable system for responding to driving under the influence of alcohol.

Underage use of alcohol

1. Support efforts to focus on alcohol advertising and marketing including: a) additional research on the effects of alcohol advertising on young persons, b) the allocation of substantial resources (on a scale similar to the amount the federal government has allocated for its anti-illicit drug media campaign) to purchase media time for messages about the dangers associated with the underage use of alcohol, and c) efforts to discourage alcohol advertising and marketing that target and appeal to underage persons;

2. Support efforts to encourage responsible hospitality practices including: a) consistent enforcement of laws regarding the sale and distribution of alcohol to underage persons, b) mandatory compliance checks of all alcohol outlets, c) training of alcohol merchants and servers regarding the sale of alcohol to underage persons, and d) the restriction of the number of alcohol outlets in areas frequented by underage persons;

3. Support collaborative community efforts to address the problem of underage alcohol use that include peer justice and youth empowerment programs, linkages among the treatment and criminal justice agencies, and a concerted effort to involve youth in the effort to create an environment which discourages rather than encourages the underage use of alcohol; and

4. Provide support for another structured and organized opportunity for collaborative discussion on this issue and, in particular, to develop more fully this working groups's extensive list of recommendations.

Community-based responses and initiatives

1. Undertake a program of community-based initiatives for preventing alcohol-related crime that are competent with respect to gender and culture. These initiatives should focus on alcohol outlet availability, advertising, and the enforcement of alcoholic beverage control regulations. The initiatives should involve partnerships with community stakeholders and should adopt strategies which include the alcoholic beverage control system and should be based upon the existing research on effective efforts in this area;

2. Support research and evaluation on alcohol-related crime issues that incorporate partnerships involving researchers and community decision makers and policy makers and that lead to broad dissemination of information on "what works" to communities interested in addressing these issues;

3. Encourage crime-prevention initiatives which incorporate alcoholic beverage control agencies as crime prevention resources; and

4. Enter into a special partnership for Indian Country initiatives on alcohol abuse and crime, with the active participation of communities within Indian Country.

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