Somehow I always end up alone: COVID-19, social isolation and crime in Queensland, Australia

Andresen, Martin A.; Hodgkinson, Tarah

doi:10.1186/s40163-020-00135-4

Cited by 55 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 48 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…These contributions have largely featured case study sites in the United States, including San Francisco and Oakland (Shayegh and Malpede 2020 ), Los Angeles (Campedelli et al 2020 ; Mohler et al 2020 ), Detroit (Felson et al 2020 ), Indianapolis (Mohler et al 2020 ), Dallas (Piquero et al 2020 ) and Chicago (Bullinger et al 2020 ), some examining multiple cities (Ashby 2020a , b ) and nationwide (Hawdon and Dearden 2020 ). Studies have also been conducted in the United Kingdom (Buil-Gil et al 2020b ; Halford et al 2020 ; Kirchmaier and Villa-Llera 2020 ; Office for National Statistics 2020 ), Australia (Andresen and Hodgkinson 2020 ; Payne and Morgan 2020a , b ), Sweden (Gerell et al 2020 ) and Canada (Hodgkinson and Andresen 2020 ).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Six months in: pandemic crime trends in England and Wales

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Governments around the world have enforced strict guidelines on social interaction and mobility to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Evidence has begun to emerge which suggests that such dramatic changes in people’s routine activities have yielded similarly dramatic changes in criminal behavior. This study represents the first ‘look back’ on six months of the nationwide lockdown in England and Wales. Using open police-recorded crime trends, we provide a comparison between expected and observed crime rates for fourteen different offence categories between March and August, 2020. We find that most crime types experienced sharp, short-term declines during the first full month of lockdown. This was followed by a gradual resurgence as restrictions were relaxed. Major exceptions include anti-social behavior and drug crimes. Findings shed light on the opportunity structures for crime and the nuances of using police records to study crime during the pandemic.

show abstract

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Six months in: pandemic crime trends in England and Wales

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The compulsive nature of drug dependency, coupled with the socioeconomic vulnerability of drug user communities, likely means that drug markets remained active despite the government's order to stay-at-home (see Eligh, 2020;Hamilton and Stevens, 2020;Namli, 2021;Winstock et al, 2020) and this activity was likely more visible to law enforcement. These competing hypotheses have been developed mostly in response to the evidence of aggregate data showing state-wide or city-wide changes in drug offence arrest rates (see Andresen and Hodgkinson, 2020;Langfield et al, 2021). Few studies have drilled down into the geospatial data to examine the spatiotemporal patterns and their implications for understanding both drug markets and policing during the pandemic.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drug markets and COVID-19: A spatiotemporal study of drug offence detection rates in Brisbane, Australia

Payne¹,

Langfield²

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In many parts of the world, the social mobility restrictions and stay-at-home orders introduced during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic have been associated with significant reductions in crime. However, contrary to this general finding, illicit drug offence detections increased significantly. In this study, we explore the geographical distribution of the increase in Queensland, Australia, using spatiotemporal generalised additive model (GAM) to identify locations in the Local Government Area (LGA) of Brisbane where drug offence detection rates were unusually high during the three months of the COVID-19 lockdown (April-June 2020). Contrary to expectation, we find that the increase in drug offence detection rates appears to have been modest in most places, but widespread and diffuse throughout the city. We conclude that drug offence detections are most likely to have increased incidentally, probably as a consequence of general street policing initiatives which saw an increase in the visibility and vulnerability of drug user communities. We do, however, identify five locations in Brisbane where the drug offence detection rate exceeded the prediction by a considerable margin (in one case, more than double the worst case prediction). We argue that in these locations the increase was likely the result of some spatial displacement of inner-city drug markets coupled with a series of targeted policing activities. Further research is needed to clarify the true mechanism of change in these locations.

show abstract

“…According to RAT, it is possible that drug market activity may have increased as guardianship temporarily declined. Conversely, others have elsewhere indicated that both property and violent offending have decreased in the absence of suitable targets (Abrams, 2020;Andresen & Hodgkinson, 2020;Ashby, 2020;Campedelli et al, 2020;Davey, 2020;Freeman, 2020;Gerrel et al, 2020;Mohler et al, 2020;Payne et al, 2020Shepherd, 2020). Paradoxically, the suitable target for a property offender is also the capable guardian of a local drug market so it makes sense that drug detections could increase while property and other offences decline.…”

Section: Lessons From Before the Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drug offence detection during the pandemic: An ARIMA analysis of rates and regional differences in Queensland, Australia

Langfield¹,

Payne

Makkai

2021

Journal of Criminology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Public commentary has offered mixed opinion on the likely impact of COVID-19 restrictions on drug-related offending. On the one hand, it is argued that drug users – and the drug markets in which they interact – may have become the incidental targets of law enforcement as police seek to enforce social distancing regulations by focusing their efforts on street-level pedestrian activity or open-air gatherings. On the other, interstate border closures and restrictions on person and freight traffic are thought to have interrupted illicit drug supply chains, temporarily reducing or displacing market activity at the street level and thus reducing police detections of drug users. In this study, we extend current analyses of crime during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore how the rate of police detection for drug possession and other drug-related offences has changed. Using crime data from the Australian state of Queensland, we use Auto-Regressive Integrated and Moving Average time series modelling techniques to explore historical trends and their dynamic forecasts. We then compare actual offence rates for March through June to identify any statistically significant changes. We find that reported drug offences significantly vary across time and location highlighting that the impact of COVID-19 is not universal across Queensland. Thus, the significant heterogeneity in local drug market dynamics that has elsewhere been documented remains even in a major crisis with significant changes in policing activity and resource allocation. Our analysis has significant import for criminal justice practitioners in further understanding drug market dynamics and drug-related offending during COVID-19 restrictions.

show abstract

Somehow I always end up alone: COVID-19, social isolation and crime in Queensland, Australia

Cited by 55 publications

References 48 publications

Six months in: pandemic crime trends in England and Wales

Six months in: pandemic crime trends in England and Wales

Drug markets and COVID-19: A spatiotemporal study of drug offence detection rates in Brisbane, Australia

Drug offence detection during the pandemic: An ARIMA analysis of rates and regional differences in Queensland, Australia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About