How queuing leads to city centre violence at night

People go out at night because they want to socialise, drink and be entertained. Unfortunately, all too often that leads to violent behaviour in our towns and city centres. But the events that lead to such violence are poorly understood.

There has been plenty of research into what reduces or promotes night-time violence in city centres. One of the clear signals of danger is that the larger the footfall in the area, the larger the chance for assaults to occur.

Crowding and noise are associated with increases in violence in city centres at night. And, in Australia, it has been shown that when trading hours are restricted there is a decrease in violence.

But our research shows the correlation between footfall and assault is not linear. In other words, if we double the footfall, we do not simply double the number of assaults. The relationship between these two factors is more complicated, so we decided to investigate what could account for that.

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