ArticleJournal of global health2026
The relationship between alcohol consumption, social distancing, and crime rates: insights from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Article in Journal of global health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: While there was a global shift in social interaction and alcohol consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic, their associations with changes in crime rates remain underexplored. We aimed to examine the associations between crime rates and alcohol use within the context of pandemic-related social distancing. Methods: We calculated crime rates across crime categories from 2011 to 2022 using crime statistics from the Korean National Police Agency. We estimated two linear regression models with the crime rate as the dependent variable. The first model examined the association of movie attendance (a proxy for social distancing) and the unemployment rate with crime rates. The second model additionally included per capita alcohol consumption to determine how the association between social distancing and crime rates was attenuated when accounting for alcohol use. Results: As of 2022, 19% of total crimes involved offenders under the influence of alcohol, with particularly high proportions in murder (64%), traffic accidents (47%), arson (32%), violence (28%), and rape (20%). Overall crime rates and offences committed under the influence of alcohol, which had steadily declined from 2011, fell sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both alcohol consumption and social interaction declined during the pandemic. While the rates of overall crime, violence, rape, traffic accidents, and arson were initially associated with social contact, these associations were no longer significant after adjusting for alcohol consumption; instead, strong positive associations with alcohol consumption were observed. The rate of murder was not significantly associated with social contact, but exhibited a significant association only with alcohol consumption. Conclusions: The concurrent declines in crime and alcohol consumption, along with the attenuating effect of alcohol in the relationship between social distancing and crime, suggest that addressing social drinking environments may be an effective strategy for reducing crime rates.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.