Changes in Crime Rates During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Mikaela Meyer, Ahmed Hassafy, Gina Lewis, Prasun Shrestha, Amelia M., Haviland, and Daniel S. Nagin

TL;DR
This study analyzes how COVID-19 pandemic restrictions affected five major crime rates in large U.S. cities, revealing mixed trends with some crimes increasing, others decreasing, and some unchanged, highlighting complex underlying factors.
Contribution
It provides a detailed empirical analysis of crime rate changes during COVID-19 using multiple regression models across several cities and crime types, introducing a city-level openness index.
Findings
Homicide and auto theft increased during the pandemic.
Robbery and larceny decreased during the pandemic.
Burglary showed no significant change.
Abstract
We estimate changes in the rates of five FBI Part 1 crime (homicide, auto theft, burglary, robbery, and larceny) during the COVID-19 pandemic from March through December 2020. Using publicly available weekly crime count data from 29 of the 70 largest cities in the U.S. from January 2018 through December 2020, three different linear regression model specifications are used to detect changes. One detects whether crime trends in four 2020 pre- and post-pandemic periods differ from those in 2018 and 2019. A second looks in more detail at the spring 2020 lockdowns to detect whether crime trends changed over successive biweekly periods into the lockdown. The third uses a city-level openness index that we created for the purpose of examining whether the degree of openness was associated with changing crime rates. For homicide and auto theft, we find significant increases during all or most of…
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Taxonomy
TopicsCrime Patterns and Interventions · Traffic and Road Safety
