IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/t7ne8.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Six Months In: Pandemic Crime Trends in England and Wales

Author

Listed:
  • Langton, Samuel
  • Farrell, Graham

    (University of Leeds)

  • Dixon, Anthony

Abstract

Governments around the world have enforced strict guidelines on social interaction and mobility in an effort to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Evidence has begun to emerge which suggests that such dramatic changes in people’s routine activities have yielded similarly dramatic changes in criminal behavior. This study represents the first ‘look back’ on six months of the nationwide lockdown in England and Wales. Using open police-recorded crime trends, we provide a comparison between expected and observed crime rates for fourteen different offence categories between March and August, 2020. We find that most crime types experienced sharp, short-term declines during the first full month of lockdown. This was followed by a gradual resurgence as restrictions were relaxed. Major exceptions include antisocial behavior and drug crimes. Findings shed light on the opportunity structures for crime and the nuances of using police records to study crime during the pandemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Langton, Samuel & Farrell, Graham & Dixon, Anthony, 2020. "Six Months In: Pandemic Crime Trends in England and Wales," SocArXiv t7ne8, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:t7ne8
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/t7ne8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/5fdb6c990694b704d5f3fc69/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/t7ne8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Payne, Jason Leslie & Morgan, Anthony, 2020. "Property Crime during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A comparison of recorded offence rates and dynamic forecasts (ARIMA) for March 2020 in Queensland, Australia," SocArXiv de9nc, Center for Open Science.
    2. Lindsey Rose Bullinger & Jillian B. Carr & Analisa Packham, 2020. "COVID-19 and Crime: Effects of Stay-at-Home Orders on Domestic Violence," NBER Working Papers 27667, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Mohler, George & Bertozzi, Andrea L. & Carter, Jeremy & Short, Martin B. & Sledge, Daniel & Tita, George E. & Uchida, Craig D. & Brantingham, P. Jeffrey, 2020. "Impact of social distancing during COVID-19 pandemic on crime in Los Angeles and Indianapolis," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    4. Hodgkinson, Tarah & Andresen, Martin A., 2020. "Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint: Changes in the frequency of criminal incidents during the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    5. Hyndman, Rob J. & Khandakar, Yeasmin, 2008. "Automatic Time Series Forecasting: The forecast Package for R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 27(i03).
    6. Payne, Jason Leslie & Morgan, Anthony, 2020. "COVID-19 and Violent Crime: A comparison of recorded offence rates and dynamic forecasts (ARIMA) for March 2020 in Queensland, Australia," SocArXiv g4kh7, Center for Open Science.
    7. Gian Maria Campedelli & Alberto Aziani & Serena Favarin, 2020. "Exploring the Effects of COVID-19 Containment Policies on Crime: An Empirical Analysis of the Short-term Aftermath in Los Angeles," Papers 2003.11021, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2020.
    8. Jinhyun Hong & David McArthur & Varun Raturi, 2020. "Did Safe Cycling Infrastructure Still Matter During a COVID-19 Lockdown?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-15, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carlos Díaz & Sebastian Fossati & Nicolás Trajtenberg, 2022. "Stay at home if you can: COVID‐19 stay‐at‐home guidelines and local crime," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(4), pages 1067-1113, December.
    2. Payne, Jason Leslie & Langfield, Cameron Thomas, 2021. "Drug offence detection during the COVID-19 lockdown: a spatiotemporal study of change in a street-level drug market," SocArXiv 2x53n, Center for Open Science.
    3. Dixon, Anthony & Farrell, Graham & Tilley, Nick, 2022. "Illegal waste fly-tipping in the COVID-19 pandemic: Enhanced compliance, temporal displacement and urban-rural variation," SocArXiv df5ue, Center for Open Science.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carlos Díaz & Sebastian Fossati & Nicolás Trajtenberg, 2022. "Stay at home if you can: COVID‐19 stay‐at‐home guidelines and local crime," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(4), pages 1067-1113, December.
    2. Carter, Travis M. & Turner, Noah D., 2021. "Examining the immediate effects of COVID-19 on residential and commercial burglaries in Michigan: An interrupted time-series analysis," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    3. Lydia Cheung & Philip Gunby, 2023. "The Initial and Dynamic Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Crime in New Zealand," Working Papers 2023-03, Auckland University of Technology, Department of Economics.
    4. Lin Liu & Jiayu Chang & Dongping Long & Heng Liu, 2022. "Analyzing the Impact of COVID-19 Lockdowns on Violent Crime," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(23), pages 1-10, November.
    5. Solmaz Moslehi & Jaai Parasnis & Massimiliano Tani & Josephina Vejayaratnam, 2021. "Assaults during lockdown in New South Wales and Victoria," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 24(2), pages 199-212.
    6. Roee Sarel, 2022. "Crime and punishment in times of pandemics," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 155-186, October.
    7. Lydia Cheung & Philip Gunby, 2022. "Crime and mobility during the COVID-19 lockdown: a preliminary empirical exploration," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(1), pages 106-113, January.
    8. Langton, Samuel & Dixon, Anthony & Farrell, Graham, 2021. "Small area variation in crime effects of COVID-19 policies in England and Wales," SocArXiv cw6a4, Center for Open Science.
    9. Piquero, Alex R. & Jennings, Wesley G. & Jemison, Erin & Kaukinen, Catherine & Knaul, Felicia Marie, 2021. "Domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic - Evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    10. Gian Maria Campedelli & Serena Favarin & Alberto Aziani & Alex R. Piquero, 2020. "Disentangling Community-level Changes in Crime Trends During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chicago," Papers 2011.05658, arXiv.org.
    11. Langton, Samuel & Dixon, Anthony & Farrell, Graham, 2021. "Small area variation in crime effects of COVID-19 policies in England and Wales," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    12. Moslehi, Solmaz & Parasnis, Jaai & Tani, Massimiliano & Vejayaratnam, Josephina, 2021. "Assaults during Lockdown in NSW and Victoria," IZA Discussion Papers 14573, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Ejrnæs, Anders & Scherg, Rune H., 2022. "Nightlife activity and crime: The impact of COVID-19 related nightlife restrictions on violent crime," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    14. Santiago Tobón Zapata & Nathalie Alvarado & Ervyn Norza & Santiago M. Perez-Vincent & Martín Vanegas-Arias, 2021. "The Evolution of Citizen Security in Colombia in Times of COVID-19," Documentos de Trabajo de Valor Público 19673, Universidad EAFIT.
    15. Hodgkinson, Tarah & Andresen, Martin A. & Frank, Richard & Pringle, Darren, 2022. "Crime down in the Paris of the prairies: Spatial effects of COVID-19 and crime during lockdown in Saskatoon, Canada," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    16. Kandaswamy Paramasivan & Rahul Subburaj & Saish Jaiswal & Nandan Sudarsanam, 2022. "Empirical evidence of the impact of mobility on property crimes during the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-14, December.
    17. Dan Anderberg & Helmut Rainer & Fabian Siuda, 2022. "Quantifying domestic violence in times of crisis: An internet search activity‐based measure for the COVID‐19 pandemic," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 185(2), pages 498-518, April.
    18. Matthew Valasik & Shannon E. Reid, 2021. "East Side Story: Disaggregating Gang Homicides in East Los Angeles," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-17, February.
    19. Dan Anderberg & Helmut Rainer & Fabian Siuda, 2020. "Quantifying domestic violence in times of crisis," IFS Working Papers W20/29, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    20. Takaku, Reo & Yokoyama, Izumi, 2021. "What the COVID-19 school closure left in its wake: Evidence from a regression discontinuity analysis in Japan," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:t7ne8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.