Objective
: To investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on conventional crime and organized crime in Mexico City, Mexico.
Methods
: Mexico City's Attorney General's Office reported crime data, covering domestic violence, burglary, robbery, vehicle theft, assault-battery, homicides, kidnapping, and extortion. We use an event study for the intertemporal variation across the 16 districts (municipalities) in Mexico City for 2019 and 2020.
Results
: We find a sharp decrease on crimes related to domestic violence, burglary, and vehicle theft; a decrease during some weeks on crimes related to assault-battery and extortion, and no effects on crimes related to robbery, kidnapping, and homicides.
Conclusions
: While our results show a decline in conventional crime during the COVID- 19 pandemic, organized crime remains steady. These findings have policy implications for catastrophic events around the world, as well as possible national security issues in Mexico.
The existing empirical evidence suggests a reduction in aggregate crime as a consequence of the COVID-19 lockdown. However, what happens when lockdown measures are relaxed? This paper considers how the COVID-19 pandemic affects crime rates throughout Mexico when the stay-at-home orders end. We use national crime data from Mexico’s National Public Security System, which reports municipality-level rates on assault & battery, theft & property crime, fraud, drug crimes & extortion, and homicides. Our results show that the majority of crimes follow a U-shaped trend—when the lockdown ends—crimes rise back to pre-pandemic levels.
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