Alcohol and Violence
Research indicates a strong relationship between drinking and violent crime. Aggression and heavy drinking may be associated in the same people, therefore it is instructive to see how the development of violence interacts with the development of drinking across the lifespan. A developmental pathway is traced across the lifespan, indicating how certain individual characteristics independently increase the likelihood of both drinking and violence, and how the ways certain individuals interact with their social environment increase the likelihood of both drinking and violence. Attention is paid to the pharmacological and cognitive eects of alcohol in relation to aggressive behaviour. In tracing a developmental pathway, the risk factors for alcohol-related violence are identiยฎed, indicating appropriate targets for prevention and intervention. Since generally violent men form one subgroup of perpetrators of domestic violence, this subgroup being more severely violent and characterized by being themselves abused as children, having witnessed parental violence and having high rates of substance use, and because witnessing or experiencing violence breeds the next generation of perpetrators of domestic violence, it is important to break the cycle by recognizing and changing violent individuals, as well as preventing further damage to their ospring.