Elsevier

Injury

Volume 35, Issue 5, May 2004, Pages 467-473
Injury

Relations between violence, calendar events and ambient conditions

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0020-1383(03)00241-9Get rights and content

Abstract

National assault injury surveillance has identified major seasonal variation, but it is not clear whether assault injury is a seasonal problem in large cities. Relationships between community violence, calendar events and ambient conditions were investigated with reference to prospective, Accident and Emergency (A&E) derived information obtained from people injured in assaults in Cardiff between 1 May 1995 and 30 April 2000. Records of daily local ambient conditions included data relating to temperature, rainfall and sunshine hours and data of major local sporting events and annual holidays were studied. Pearson correlation coefficients were used to evaluate associations between variables. Overall, 19,264 assault-related A&E attendances were identified over the 5-year period. Almost three-quarters were males. Violence was clustered predominantly on Saturdays and Sundays, New Year and rugby international days. Temperature, rainfall and sunlight hours did not correlate significantly with violence (P>0.05). The findings indicate that injury reduction effort should be intensified at the known risk times for violence and that in a capital city/regional centre violence cannot be predicted on the basis of ambient conditions.

Introduction

Public health approaches to violence and injury prevention focus on risk factors.8 They embrace the possibility that relatively unimportant risk factors and large structural factors may interact and that they provide opportunities for intervention.13 Many studies have correlated violence with socio-demographic offender and non-offender variables, such as age, gender, race, geographic location and economic status.7 These relatively stable criminological variables cannot explain short-term variations in violence and injury rates. In this study the focus of interest was time of violence-related injury: daily, weekly and monthly incidence of intentional injury and relationships with local ambient conditions, sporting events and annual celebrations.

Section snippets

Violence-related attendance, ambient conditions and calendar events

Prospective data relating to age, gender and attendance date for all those injured in violence who attended the only Accident and Emergency (A&E) department in Cardiff over a 5-year period from 1 May 1995 to 30 April 2000 were studied. At all times patient confidentiality was maintained. Violence-related A&E attendance were categorised by gender and five age groups: 0–10, 11–17, 18–30, 31–50 and >50 years. Flow of patients through A&E departments and stages of data capture were also studied.

Data recording in A&E department

The Patient Administrative System (PAS) was used to enter patient data. First point of contact was with triage personnel, before registration by the receptionist at which the reason for attendance, in this case, violence-related injury, was entered (Fig. 1). Patients were then referred to the A&E medical officer if required and further referral was made for treatment by specialists depending on each case. The outcomes were: discharge without further review, discharge with review in an

Discussion

Few theories have considered the immediate situational factors that may help explain why a particular criminal event occurred at a particular time. Situational approach to crime as well as rational choice theory, suggest that immediate crises, events and conditions are important factors in the offenders decision to commit a crime.2 The routine activity theory attempts to examine the relationship between climatic variables and criminal behaviour.3 This theory suggests that individual activity

Acknowledgements

V. Sivarajasingam was the principal author of the paper and retrieved Accident and Emergency department data. D. Corcoran and D. Jones retrieved data from the Cardiff meteorological centre, on holidays and sport fixtures and carried out most of the analysis. A. Ware and J. Shepherd designed and supervised the study. V. Sivarajasingam will act as overall guarantor.

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