Initial evidence on the relationship between the coronavirus pandemic and crime...

The current coronavirus pandemic is drastically altering many aspects of life around the world. This article outlines initial evidence on how crime is changing, using data from a group of large cities in the United States. This evidence is necessarily limited and it will be possible to understand more detail as the pandemic progresses and more data become available. Nevertheless it is likely to be useful to consider the available evidence now, both to help the development of research questions and data collection for further research, and to provide the best-available evidence on a topic of substantial public interest.

The first cases of the COVID-19 disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 were reported in the city of Wuhan, China in December 2019. The first case in the United States was reported on 20 January 2020 in the suburbs of Seattle, Washington (Holshue et al. 2020). Within a week, cases had been reported in Illinois, Arizona and California, and then in every state except Wyoming by 18 March (Dong et al. 2020). By 11 May 2020, there had been about 1,345,000 reported cases of coronavirus in the United States (see Fig. 1) and 80,554 people had died.

Local, state and federal agencies responded to the pandemic with measures designed to slow the spread of disease and minimize the intensity of peak demand for potentially scarce healthcare resources (US Department of Health and Human Services 2020). One of the main mechanisms for achieving these goals was ‘social distancing’, i.e. reducing person-to-person transfer of the virus by minimizing the circumstances in which people were in close contact with one another (Qualls et al. 2017). This was done by closing schools, cancelling public events (including almost all sports and public entertainment) and advising or ordering people to stay home except for essential trips. California became the first to issue a state-wide stay-at-home order on 19 March, with Illinois, New Jersey and New York following over the next 3 days. Thirty-four more states issued similar orders within the following 2 weeks (Mervosh et al. 2020), during which time all 50 states had ordered or recommended school closures (Education Week 2020).

Patterns of activity during the pandemic were likely to be different from normal for at least three reasons. First, some people’s activities were directly affected by the virus, e.g. because they were sick or caring for those who were. Second, activities may have been affected by people’s fear of infection, especially those who have underlying medical conditions that put them at greater risk. Third, a great many people’s activities will have been influenced by government actions to slow the spread of the virus.

Data from the location tracking service Foursquare (2020) show that by late March visits to shopping malls, clothing stores, gyms, bars, restaurants, airports and hotels had all fallen by more than 50% compared to mid February, while visits to offices had fallen 37%. Conversely, people were likely to be spending more time at home, since children were not at school, many service-sector employees were furloughed and employers encouraged staff to work from home. Some public places also stand out as becoming busier during the early weeks of the pandemic: Foursquare (2020) data show increases in visits to grocery, hardware, liquor and drug stores beginning in early March. The same source also shows increases in visits to parks and hiking trails, although this may a seasonal effect as winter gave way to spring.

The routine activities approach (Cohen and Felson 1979) can be used to understand relationships between crime and people’s daily activities. For a crime to occur, one or more motivated offenders must come into contact with a suitable target in the absence of controllers (guardians of targets, managers of places and handlers of offenders) who make committing the crime more difficult (for a recent description of this framework, see Eck and Madensen 2015). For example, a purse-snatching in a public park requires not only that a purse and a purse-snatcher be in the same place at the same time, but that other park-goers (potential target guardians) do not intervene, that the park authorities (place managers) have not taken steps to create an environment that makes purse-snatching more difficult, and that the offender’s girlfriend (a potential offender handler) has not dissuaded them from offending by threatening to end the relationship if they do.

The coronavirus pandemic may have changed activities of each of these actors in different ways. Fewer people on the street may have meant fewer targets for street robbery, but also fewer guardians. More people in grocery stores may mean more potential shoplifters, but queuing systems and more staff refilling depleted shelves may have led to more-active place management. Social distancing advice to keep 6-feet apart from others may have made pick-pocketing almost impossible, while only having minor effects on other types of crime. The rapid development and complexity of changes to large parts of daily life mean predicting the direction or magnitude of any changes in crime is difficult.

Existing evidence

To the author’s knowledge, there are no published empirical studies on the influence of crime on previous epidemics such as the 1918 influenza pandemic or the outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002–2004 or Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) since 2012. There are, however, other potential sources of evidence on how crime changes during sudden and widespread changes to routine activities.

Several scholars have studied changes in crime during and after natural disasters, particularly Atlantic hurricanes (Elmes et al. 2014). Disasters cause widespread changes to routine activities through deaths, evacuations and disruption of working and leisure patterns, as well as through damage to the physical environment. Lebeau (2002) and Frailing and Harper (2017) found increases in burglaries in the immediate aftermath of hurricanes in the United States, possibly due to more properties being unattended if residents have evacuated or been hospitalized (Leitner and Helbich 2011). Studies of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina found an increase in homicide, possibly due to the disruption and subsequent informal reorganization of drug markets (Frailing and Harper 2017). However, Roman et al. (2007) found that violence more generally in New Orleans actually fell after Katrina, before rising to a higher level than before the hurricane. Leitner et al. (2011) found that violence was broadly stable in other Louisiana parishes hit by the storm. Varano et al. (2010) studied violent and non-violent crime rates in cities that hosted large numbers of Katrina evacuees and found no widespread or pervasive changes. Prelog (2016), studying associations between crime and the frequency and severity of natural disasters at the county level, found disasters were associated with higher property crime but no change in violence. For further discussion of crime in the context of natural disasters, see Frailing and Harper (2017).

Another potential source of evidence comes from changes in crime associated with the large-scale changes in routine activities caused by major sporting events. These affect routine activities by bringing large numbers of people into the event area, disrupting traffic and public transport, and gathering people to watch the event on television. As with crime during natural disasters, studies of crime during major events have produced mixed results. Campaniello (2013) found that the football World Cup was associated with increases across several types of property crime (including burglary and pick-pocketing), while Kurland et al. (2014) concluded large football matches at Wembley Stadium in London were associated with increases in both violent crime and theft in the immediate area. However, Breetzke and Cohn (2013) found no city-wide increase in violence associated with football matches and no increase in burglary even in the neighborhood of the stadium. Baumann et al. (2012) reported that a city hosting the Olympic Games was associated with a 10% increase in property crime, but hosting the Super Bowl was associated with a 2.5% decrease in violence. For a recent discussion of crime associated with major sporting events, see Piquero et al. (2019).

The coronavirus pandemic is different in nature to the natural disasters and sporting events analyzed by previous researchers. In particular, a pandemic is a ‘slow-onset’ emergency that emerges over time and then varies in its impact (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2011). It is also different in that, unlike a hurricane or tornado, coronavirus has left the physical environment largely untouched. It has not, for example, destroyed buildings or cut off electricity. Instead, the changes caused by the pandemic have largely related to human activity.

The goal of this study was to make an initial estimate of how the frequency of different types of crime changed during the coronavirus pandemic. Given the evolving nature of the situation, the complexity of potential interactions between actors in the routine activities framework and the lack of any previous research on crime during pandemics, this study did not attempt to test specific hypotheses but to explore how crime varied throughout the early months of the pandemic.