WHEN Paul Evans was Police Commissioner in Boston, Massachusetts, he reduced under-age drinking with a policy of imposed “alcohol-free zones” and “party patrols”.

A former beat policeman and a decorated veteran of the Vietnam war, the American head of Britain’s Police Standards Unit (PSU) is credited with the “Boston Miracle”.

The city’s murder rate was reduced by two thirds in the decade he was in charge. One focus of his community policing approach was a purge on under-age drinking.

In hard-drinking New England, Boston’s alcohol problem is compounded by the number of students who study there.

Ralph Hingson, a Boston resident who heads the prevention research division of the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a US government agency, said: “I was in Nottingham in the fall. I was struck by the rowdiness and the amount of drinking that was going on by young people. We have a lot of young people in Boston because of all the colleges and there are some neighbourhoods that are quite similar to what I saw going on there.”

State law raised the legal drinking age from 18 to 20 in 1979 and again in 1985, to 21, with the result that most of the college students are too young to be allowed to drink.

Under Mr Evans, Boston’s police worked closely with the universities and community groups to rein in the student drinkers. The police stepped up sting operations against liquor stores that sold alcohol to under-age drinkers.

At the same time officers made joint “party patrols” with university officials to trawl the surrounding streets for under-age students who were drunk. The police also encourage the colleges to control drinking on campus.

As a result, Northeastern University now offers a non-alcoholic version of the popular student drinking game “beer pong”, in which students throw ping-pong balls into plastic tumblers of beer, which the losers must then drink. In the university’s approved version, the tumblers contain only non-alcoholic root beer.

Kathy Tragos, who runs the West Roxbury Public Safety Coalition in her Boston neighbourhood, says that she won a police anti-violence grant to fund the group’s efforts to prevent under-age drinking.

During Mr Evans’s tenure, she said that her local police captain sought out community groups to address crime. The police held a meeting with all 40 or so bars and liquor stores in the area to discuss the rules for alcohol sales.

“When you have a high school dance and two girls are sent home by ambulance because they are inebriated, you have a problem,” Ms Tragos added.

Boston introduced “alcohol-free zones” at major gatherings, such as the annual concert near the Charles River to celebrate American Independence Day on July 4.

To limit binge drinking on New Year’s Eve, the city also organised a “first night” celebration with a series of public events at which alcohol is not served.

But Barbara Harrington, director of the local chapter of the pressure group Mothers Against Drunk Driving, points out that under-age drinking is difficult to control.

“If you think that under-age drinkers are that easily controlled, you are naive,” she said. “In many ways, the horse is out of the barn by the time they are in college.”

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating