Police-issued barring notices in Western Australia: An analysis of the type, seriousness and trajectory of associated offences

Abstract

Introduction

Police-issued barring notices are currently used in Western Australia in response to alcohol-related disorderly and anti-social behaviour. This paper examines the type, severity and trajectory of the offending behaviours associated with served barring notices.

Method

WA Police Force de-identified the data for 3815 individuals who had received one or more police-imposed barring notice/s between 2011 and 2020. The offence category associated with each barring notice was examined to explore the overall breakdown and whether/how offending categories change for recipients of subsequent barring notices.

Results

For single and multiple barring notice recipients, the most common offence categories were fighting/physical violence and public order offences. Within a subset of the data, non-anti-social offences also spiked. Aggressive behaviours predominate for recipients in metropolitan areas, compared with public order offences in regional locations.

Discussion and Conclusions

For recipients of multiple barring notices, behaviours do not become more serious but neither do they moderate to any notable extent. The low number of repeat barring notices (5%) may suggest an overall beneficial effect on recipient behaviours but more analysis is needed to examine the potential confounding effects of factors, such as fly-in/fly-out workers, policing and locational differences.