An evaluation of bylaw and policy changes on pharmacy robberies in British Columbia

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Author(s)
Andresen, Martin A
Mann, Elliott
Hodgkinson, Tarah
Thacker, Stephen
Nakagawa, Bob
Year published
2019
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
On 15 September 2015, the College of Pharmacists of British Columbia (BC) implemented a set of by-law and security policy changes in an effort to reduce robberies and burglaries in BC pharmacies. Prior to these by-law and security policy changes, pharmacy robberies were increasing in BC for approximately 5 years. After implementation, pharmacy robberies decreased significantly. In this paper, we evaluate the potential impact of the by-law and security policy changes on pharmacy robberies in four regions within BC. We find strong evidence supporting that the reduction in pharmacy robberies is a result of this by-law and ...
View more >On 15 September 2015, the College of Pharmacists of British Columbia (BC) implemented a set of by-law and security policy changes in an effort to reduce robberies and burglaries in BC pharmacies. Prior to these by-law and security policy changes, pharmacy robberies were increasing in BC for approximately 5 years. After implementation, pharmacy robberies decreased significantly. In this paper, we evaluate the potential impact of the by-law and security policy changes on pharmacy robberies in four regions within BC. We find strong evidence supporting that the reduction in pharmacy robberies is a result of this by-law and accompanying security policy changes. Specifically, there was an immediate and substantial drop in pharmacy robberies within Vancouver, with a change in trend (now decreasing instead of increasing) for the Interior and Lower Mainland less Vancouver. These results should be considered support for maintaining these by-laws and security policy changes in BC and potential implementation in other areas of Canada experiencing similar issues.
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View more >On 15 September 2015, the College of Pharmacists of British Columbia (BC) implemented a set of by-law and security policy changes in an effort to reduce robberies and burglaries in BC pharmacies. Prior to these by-law and security policy changes, pharmacy robberies were increasing in BC for approximately 5 years. After implementation, pharmacy robberies decreased significantly. In this paper, we evaluate the potential impact of the by-law and security policy changes on pharmacy robberies in four regions within BC. We find strong evidence supporting that the reduction in pharmacy robberies is a result of this by-law and accompanying security policy changes. Specifically, there was an immediate and substantial drop in pharmacy robberies within Vancouver, with a change in trend (now decreasing instead of increasing) for the Interior and Lower Mainland less Vancouver. These results should be considered support for maintaining these by-laws and security policy changes in BC and potential implementation in other areas of Canada experiencing similar issues.
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Journal Title
Crime Science
Volume
8
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Subject
Social Sciences
Criminology & Penology
Crime prevention
Pharmacies
Robbery