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What is the Link Between Alcohol and Crime?

There is strong evidence linking alcohol and crime, for instance:

A recent study by BERL found that harmful alcohol use in 2005/2006 cost New Zealand an estimated $5.296 billion in resources, including police, health, ACC, justice and corrections services.
NZ Police recently produced a National Alcohol Assessment. It shows the many and increasing ways that Police are involved in dealing with alcohol-related offending. For instance, at least 31 percent of recorded offences were committed in circumstances where the offender had consumed alcohol prior to committing the offence. (NZ Police, 2009, page 24).
Alcohol is strongly associated with family violence. The 2001 New Zealand National Survey of Crime Victims found that 30 percent of victims of intimate partner violence thought their partner was affected by alcohol and/or drugs during the most recent incident.
A significant proportion of people in criminal justice settings in New Zealand and internationally have alcohol or drug problems. One nationwide New Zealand study found that almost 70 percent of female inmates and 75% of male inmates had suffered from alcohol abuse or dependence problems at some point in their lives (Simpson et al 1999 ; Brinded et al 1996 ).

The Police National Alcohol Assessment from April 2009 found that at least a third of recorded violence offences and family violence incidents in 2007/08 were committed where the offender had consumed alcohol prior to committing the offence. For serious offences (such as homicides and incidents where force was used by Police) approximately half of the alleged offenders or victims were affected by alcohol. Approximately one third of participants in the New Zealand Alcohol and Drug Abuse Monitoring (NZ-ADAM) programme were reported to have been using alcohol at the time of arrest. In 2007/08 72 percent of participants in the NZ-ADAM study who had been using alcohol at the time of arrest reported that it contributed at least to some or all of their offending at the time of arrest.