Climate Change and Crime Revisited: An Exploration of Monthly Temperature Anomalies and UCR Crime Data

Abstract

A growing body of research suggests a positive connection between climate change and crime, but few studies have explored the seasonal nature of that link. Here, we examine how the impact of climate change on crime may partly depend on specific times of the year as recent climatological research suggests that climate change may have a diverging impact during different times of the year. To do so, we utilize the largest, most current dataset of all main categories of reported crime by month and year in the United States—the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reports. We employ historical weather data collected by the Global Historical Climatology Network to measure climate change, and develop a procedure that weighs and connects these data to individual crime reporting agencies. We discover not only a positive association between climate change and crime but also substantial monthly variation in this association.

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“…However, all previous estimates are either back-of-the-envelope or do not account for crucial regional (within a single nation) and seasonal dependencies recently discovered in the relationship between criminal activity and temperature (Hsiang et al 2013, Ranson, 2014, Hsiang et al 2017, Mares and Moffett, 2019. We established a methodology that allows for known regional (Mares and Moffett 2016, de Melo et al 2018, Linning et al 2017, Mares and Moffett 2019 and seasonal variations (Cohn and Rotton, 2000, McDowall et al 2012, Carbone-Lopez and Lauritsen 2013, McDowall and Curtis, 2015 to be detected and built into the statistical models developed (Harp and Karnauskas 2018). In particular, stronger relationships between temperature and both violent and property crime during wintertime months provided strong evidence for the routine activities theory as the main driver of the crime-temperature relationship.…”

“…The spatial variation of multi-model mean projections of surface air temperature is considerable, even across the continental US (figure 1(a) uses RCP8.5 forcing and the end-of-century period for an illustrative example). In addition, as noted previously, the quantitative sensitivity of violent crime to temperature also varies spatially (Harp andKarnauskas 2018, Mares andMoffett 2019). To enable the calculation of appropriate region-based projections, we adopted the optimal boundaries previously determined in our retrospective study, also identified in figure 1(a).…”

“…The link between weather and crime has drawn the attention of the fields of criminology and sociology since the mid-19th century (United States National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders 1968, Block 1984, Cohn 1990, Field 1992, Gamble and Hess 2012, Mares 2013, Ranson 2014, Mares and Moffett 2016, Mares and Moffett 2019, with most previous studies identifying air temperature as the lead factor in the connection (Field 1992, Anderson et al 1997, Hipp et al 2004, Mares and Moffett 2016, Harp and Karnauskas 2018. Two mechanisms have emerged as likely drivers of this relationship: the temperature-aggression hypothesis-initially posed as the General Affective Aggression Model (Anderson et al 1996)-and the routine activities theory (Cohen and Felson 1979).…”