Daiquiris and drive-bys

More liquor stores in a neighborhood mean more drinking. They also mean more violence.

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Would you go a mile or two out of your way for the neighborhood liquor store? What if it was only half a block away, and there were a couple more like it down the street? Not surprisingly, researchers have found that the number of alcohol outlets in a given area is directly related to how much alcohol that area consumes. “We have a whole body of science,” says Robert Reynolds of the Pacific Center for Violence Prevention, “that says if you increase the physical distance between outlets, the amount of drinking in a community goes down.”

And, notably, so may the violence. A soon-to-be-released book by sociologist Robert Nash Parker, “Alcohol and Homicide: A Deadly Combination of Two American Traditions,” cites a 20-year study of 256 U.S. cities demonstrating that alcohol outlet density has a significant effect on that area’s homicide rates, and that the nationwide increase in outlet density from 1960 to 1980 played a major role in the skyrocketing violence during that period.

In his study, Parker was able to factor out other causes of inner-city violence such as poverty, ethnicity, and family structure. He concluded that high alcohol outlet density doesn’t just coincide with a high level of violence in the area, but is in fact a cause of it. Other studies show that almost 50 percent of convicted homicide offenders used alcohol prior to committing their crimes; a Canadian study shows 42 percent of all violent incidents involve alcohol consumption.

Activists working to stem violence are already arming themselves with Parker’s statistics. In Salinas, California, local activists persuaded the city council to deny licensure to a liquor outlet by using Parker’s data, according to activist Linda Padilla-Sanchez, “to back up our emotional outcry against liquor-store saturation.” Parker and his colleagues hope his research empowers other communities to prevent alcohol outlets, and the attendant culture of violence, from overrunning their neighborhoods.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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