Editor's Introduction — Policing for Prevention: Reducing Crime, Public Intoxication and Injury

Like Volume 5 of Crime Prevention Studies, this volume had its inspiration in two 1994 Griffith University conferences, "Problem Solving for Crime Prevention" and "The Prevention of Alcohol-Related Road Crashes: Social and Legal Approaches." For this reason the majority of contributors are Australian, and most papers deal with prevention issues from an Australian perspective. The themes, however, are universal: the regulation and control of public drinking; policing alcohol-related violence, drug consumption , and public disorder; accident and injury prevention; the management of police resources; and problem-oriented policing. The Australian case studies are augmented by valuable contributions from Sweden (Knutsson on public order) and the U.S. (Rengert on auto theft), sharpening the focus on how police and regulatory resources can be directed most effectively for the prevention of violence, accidents, disorder, and property crime. Reflecting a history of high levels of alcohol consumption and abuse (Homel and Clark, 1994), four of the Australian chapters are about the regulation of the licensed drinking environment. Violence, drinking and driving, and other forms of alcohol-related crime and disorder are a continuing problem in Australia and most other Western countries, particularly around major urban and beachside entertainment areas. As Tim Stockwell points out in an overview of his center's program of research and intervention in this area, the traditional responses to alcohol-related crime and injury have been reactive policing and the education and rehabilitation of drinkers. However, a new and apparently more promising approach is being pioneered that focuses on the