Blue Laws, Liquor Stores, and Crime∗

This paper studies the relationship between crime and off-premise alcohol availability, looking at the repeal of Connecticut’s blue law banning the sale of retail alcohol on Sundays. Using detailed crime data in Hartford, I construct concentric rings around liquor stores and beer-selling grocery stores to conduct a difference-indifferences analysis and find that allowing Sunday sales increased police incidents near retail alcohol stores by approximately 14%. This increase was mostly driven by alcohol-related and less-serious crimes. Additional analysis using Providence, Rhode Island as a control suggests that the repeal caused a net citywide increase of similar magnitude. Moreover, there is no evidence that this increase is caused by a redistribution of criminal activity across other days of the week. Results suggest that repealing blue laws, and other temporal restrictions on retail alcohol, has social and public safety costs. JEL Classification: H79, I18, K42.