Drink-related crime costs 13% of Justice budget

ONE euro out of every seven euro spent by the Department of Justice goes directly on dealing with alcohol-related crime, new research shows.

The study, which has been published by the HSE, estimates that €319 million is spent by three justice agencies on crime linked to alcohol.

A breakdown shows:

* €191m is spent by An Garda Síochána.

* €51m is spent by the Prison Service.

* €77m is spent by the Courts Service.

The €319m represents 13% of the total Department of Justice budget (€2.4bn), both in 2007, the year on which the estimates are based, and in 2011.

The study, entitled Costs to Society of Problem Alcohol Use in Ireland, was carried out for the HSE by Sean Byrne, a lecturer in economics in the Dublin Institute of Technology.

The study based these justice system costings on research conducted in Scotland, but reduced them in line with lower crime rates in Ireland.

The report said the total cost of alcohol-related crime was €1.19 billion.

In addition to the criminal justice costs of €319m, it estimated that the cost to victims, in terms of trauma, injury and even death, and the cost of property, lost through burglary and criminal damage, to be €435m.

In addition, it estimated the cost of lost productivity of victims at €171m. The report also said that substantial security costs, in the form of security systems, are incurred in anticipation of crime, and estimated this to cost €264m.

Mr Byrne said he used British studies to estimate these other crime-related costs.

He pointed out that many alcohol-related crimes are not reported to gardaí and that, in some crimes, such as domestic violence and sexual offences, the role of alcohol is not recorded by gardaí.

He cited research indicating that around half of perpetrators of homicides and sexual assaults were drinking and that alcohol was a factor in 70% of domestic violence cases.

According to Mr Byrne’s estimates, crime-related costs and health costs (€1.2bn) are the two causes that incur the bulk of all alcohol abuse costs, which he calculates at €3.7bn.

These costs are based on 2007 figures and reflect a significant rise on 2003 (€2.6m), the last time the same author conducted the estimates, on that occasion for the Government’s Strategic Task Force on Alcohol Report (2004).

Mr Byrne said that, since then, more data has become available, particularly on alcohol-related illnesses.

The research showed that in the health system, €500m is spent on hospital in-patient care, an estimated €574m on GP and allied services and €104m on mental health services.

Mr Byrne said these estimates are for what are he described as tangible costs, and do not include human costs. He said the estimates are therefore an “underestimate” of the true cost.

He said a British study estimated the human and emotional costs to be three times the tangible cost to the criminal justice system.

Report summary

Below are the principal conclusions drawn after the HSE carried out a detailed assessment of the cost to society of problem alcohol use in Ireland.

Alcohol consumption in Ireland doubled between 1970 and 2003, one of the largest increases in the world during that period. This increase occurred over a period when alcohol consumption was falling in most developed countries. Though consumption fell between 2003 and 2009, Irish consumption at 13.4 litres of pure alcohol per person in 2006 was still the second highest in the OECD.

Ireland also has one of the highest levels of underage drinking in the developed world and one of the worst records for binge drinking. The increase in alcohol consumption has caused a commensurate increase in alcohol-related harms in Irish society. These are comprehensively documented in Alcohol Related Harms in Ireland (Hope, 2008) which shows an alarming increase in alcohol-related accidents and illnesses, alcohol-related crime, alcohol-related domestic abuse and alcohol-related absences from work.

All of these harms impose significant costs on Irish society, in addition to the costs borne by the drinkers themselves. The main costs are the additional costs imposed on the healthcare system, the criminal justice system and the costs of road accidents. Since the 1970s, most developed countries have published estimates of the costs of alcohol-related harms. A preliminary estimate of €2 billion as the total cost to society of alcohol-related harm in Ireland, based on the limited data available at the time, was published in the report of the Strategic Task Force on Alcohol in 2004. Since the publication of that report, more data, particularly on alcohol-related illnesses has become available.

The estimates in this report are based on the methods used in similar reports from other developed countries, particularly the reports for England and Wales and for Scotland and Northern Ireland. The estimated overall cost to Irish society of problem alcohol use is €3.7bn in 2007.

The total cost of €3.7bn represented 1.9% of GDP in Ireland in 2007. Baumberg and Anderson (2006), in their review of studies of the social cost of alcohol misuse in the EU, calculated the average total tangible social cost of alcohol misuse to be 1.3% of GDP in the EU with a range of 0.9% to 2.4%.

The studies for England and Wales and for Scotland estimate the social costs of alcohol misuse figures as 1.7% of GDP for England and Wales in 2001 and 1.5% for Scotland in 2003. The Northern Ireland study estimates the social cost of alcohol misuse in Northern Ireland in 2008 to be 1.8% of GDP.

The estimates in this paper are for the tangible costs of problem alcohol use and are an underestimate, insofar as sufficient data is not available in Ireland, to calculate some of the tangible costs included in estimates from other countries. No attempt is made in this paper to calculate the human or emotional costs of problem alcohol use. In the British study, the estimate of the emotional cost of alcohol-related crime is three times the tangible cost to the criminal justice system of such crime. While estimates of the tangible costs of problem alcohol use will always be subject to reservations, when the unquantified human costs are considered, estimates of the tangible costs greatly understate the true cost of problem alcohol use to society.

This study concludes with an examination of the impact of alcohol price on consumption and on alcohol-related harms. There is strong evidence from many countries that increasing the price of alcohol reduces alcohol consumption and related harms. While the nominal price of alcohol has risen significantly over the past 15 years, the real price, which is the price adjusted for changes in income, has fallen by 50% since the mid-1990s because incomes have risen faster than alcohol prices and excise duties have declined in real terms.

Ireland imposes relatively high nominal excise duty rates on alcohol, but the real value of these duties have fallen steeply since 1996. There have been only three increases in excise duty on alcohol since 1994 and the duty on beer has remained unchanged since 1994. The duty on spirits was raised in 2003 but was lowered in the 2010 budget.

The decline in the real price of alcohol in Ireland has resulted in alcohol becoming significantly more affordable, particularly for young people, which in turn has led to the very alarming increase in consumption from 1990 to the present. There is considerable evidence that increasing the price of alcohol reduces alcohol-related harms and the Government should seriously consider raising the rate of excise duty on alcohol as a means of reducing harms.

* Sean Byrne, BComm, MEconSc, lecturer in Economics at the Dublin Institute of Technology