Exploring the Effects of COVID-19 Containment Policies on Crime: An Empirical Analysis of the Short-term Aftermath in Los Angeles

Abstract

The global spread of 2019-nCoV, a new virus belonging to the coronavirus family, forced national and local governments to apply different sets of measures aimed at containing the outbreak. Los Angeles has been one of the first cities in the United States to declare the state of emergency on March 4 th , progressively issuing stronger policies involving (among the others) social distancing, the prohibition of crowded private and public gatherings and closure of leisure premises. These interventions highly disrupt and modify daily activities and habits, urban mobility and micro-level interactions between citizens. One of the many social phenomena that could be influenced by such measures is crime. Exploiting public data on crime in Los Angeles, and relying on routine activity and pattern theories of crime, this work investigates whether and how new coronavirus containment policies have an impact on crime trends in a metropolis. The article specifically focuses on eight urban crime categories, daily monitored from January 1 st 2017 to March 16 th 2020. The analyses will be updated bi-weekly to dynamically assess the shortand medium-term effects of these interventions to shed light on how crime adapts to such structural modification of the environment. Finally, policy implications are also discussed.

Disentangling community-level changes in crime trends during the COVID-19 pandemic in Chicago

“… 2015 ), partially replicating the methodology presented in Campedelli et al. ( 2020 ). Within the context of the Bayesian models, we focus on the distribution, direction, and significance of the relative cumulative effect (RCE) of COVID-19 containment policies for each crime in each community.…”

“… 2020 )—crime reduction is the prevalent spillover on crime of COVID-19 containment policies (Ashby 2020 ; Campedelli et al. 2020 ; Mohler et al. 2020 ; Payne et al.…”

“…These studies are certainly useful as they help to examine changes in crime before and after policies have been put into place at large units of analyses (Ashby 2020 ; Abrams 2020 ; Campedelli et al. 2020 ; Leslie and Wilson 2020 ; Mohler et al. 2020 ; Piquero et al.…”

Minor covid-19 association with crime in Sweden

“…For crime related calls for service he concluded that while some cities saw decreases, the over all pattern was that more than half the cities studied had levels of calls for service that were of an expected level for each crime type studied. Campedelli et al (2020) analyzed crime in Los Angeles until March 28th, and found no change to homicide, assault with deadly weapon, intimate partner violence, vehicle theft or burglary. They did however note a small reduction of assaults, and somewhat larger reductions in shoplifting, theft and robberies as well as for total crime (Campedelli et al 2020).…”

Adaptations to COVID-19 in Community Corrections Agencies across the United States

“…On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic following the rapid spread of COVID-19 (Campedelli et al, 2020). In an attempt to spearhead agency response to COVID-19, Exit: Executives Transforming Probation & Parole, a coalition consisting of current and former community supervision executives, and the Vera Institute of Justice (2020b) released statements with recommendations for community supervision agencies across the United States.…”