Questions of how to regulate the sale of alcohol, how to enforce public intoxication, and whether or not alcohol leads to crime can quickly divide communities into factions. So what evidence exists to help cities answer these questions?
Tristan Hallman set out to discover whether Dallas could hold its liquor—by mapping liquor licenses and crime to search for correlations.
According to Hallman, the map shows "clusters of liquor stores in some of the top Dallas police crime hot spots"—such as in the far north "Dallas Hot sport" of Preston Road and Spring Valley Road. He also notes correlations in Red Bird and in Five Points.
Bu there's a catch:
"But the classic and not-so-scientific eyeball test also shows the biggest cluster is concentrated downtown and in entertainment-like districts like Uptown and Deep Ellum and Oak Lawn. They are not the top areas for crime in Dallas. And another intersection known for some violent crime, St. Augustine and Bruton in Pleasant Grove have very few places licensed to sell booze."
Hallman goes on to examine research into the effects of alcohol sales to crime, which lacks academic research that can make the correlation to causation leap.
Read the full story: Map: Where is all the booze in Dallas? And does it correlate with crime rates?
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