Last year over 3,000 people were arrested for being drunk and disorderly on Newcastle streets.

So the police are trying a new way to stop this kind of behaviour, you can have the choice of paying an £80 fine OR you can opt to pay half the fine, and £40 towards an alcohol behaviour course.

Will it work? I’ve been finding out more from the police and other agencies providing the course:

The most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the number of people binge drinking in the North East is going down – as it is across the country.  Over a ten year period up to 2010 it has gone down more steeply here in the North East – we used to have 4% more binge drinkers than the national average in 2000 – now our numbers are equal to those across the country.

Interestingly there were more women binge drinking in the North East in 2000 than the national average – but ten years later this figure has gone down from 13% to 12%.  The North East is bucking the national trend which has seen an increase in binge drinking women across Great Britain which has gone from 10% in 2000 to 13% in 2010.  So in 2010 the North East had 1% fewer women drinking to excess than the national average.