The 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic and Its Corresponding Data Boon: Issues With Pandemic-Related Data From Criminal Justice Organizations

Wallace, Danielle; Walker, Jason; Nelson, Jake R.; Towers, Sherry; Eason, John M.; Grubesic, Tony H.

doi:10.1177/10439862211027993

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…The main threat to the validity of our findings is related to the use of police-recorded crime statistics as a primary source of data. Police-recorded crime data are known to be severely affected by measurement error arising from underreporting and underrecording, and it is yet unknown the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic not only affected crime but also the measurement properties of crime statistics (Wallace et al, 2021 ). This may be particularly problematic in the case of cybercrime, given the low reporting rates that define these offences (van de Weijer et al, 2019 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Offline crime bounces back to pre-COVID levels, cyber stays high: interrupted time-series analysis in Northern Ireland

Buil‐Gil

Kemp

2021

Crime Sci

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Much research has shown that the first lockdowns imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with changes in routine activities and, therefore, changes in crime. While several types of violent and property crime decreased immediately after the first lockdown, online crime rates increased. Nevertheless, little research has explored the relationship between multiple lockdowns and crime in the mid-term. Furthermore, few studies have analysed potentially contrasting trends in offline and online crimes using the same dataset. To fill these gaps in research, the present article employs interrupted time-series analysis to examine the effects on offline and online crime of the three lockdown orders implemented in Northern Ireland. We analyse crime data recorded by the police between April 2015 and May 2021. Results show that many types of traditional offline crime decreased after the lockdowns but that they subsequently bounced back to pre-pandemic levels. In contrast, results appear to indicate that cyber-enabled fraud and cyber-dependent crime rose alongside lockdown-induced changes in online habits and remained higher than before COVID-19. It is likely that the pandemic accelerated the long-term upward trend in online crime. We also find that lockdowns with stay-at-home orders had a clearer impact on crime than those without. Our results contribute to understanding how responses to pandemics can influence crime trends in the mid-term as well as helping identify the potential long-term effects of the pandemic on crime, which can strengthen the evidence base for policy and practice.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Offline crime bounces back to pre-COVID levels, cyber stays high: interrupted time-series analysis in Northern Ireland

Buil‐Gil

Kemp

2021

Crime Sci

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“…Corrections COVID exacerbated the spread of the virus among incarcerated individuals, as well as individuals employed at correctional institutions (Wallace et al, 2021). Correctional workers, in fact, have been found far more likely than the general public and twice more likely than other criminal justice practitioners to have contracted the virus (Nowotny et al, 2021).…”

Section: The Justice Apparatus During Covidmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many jails reduced their inmate populations, prisons halted the transfer of inmates from jails, and state and federal prisons released over 100,000 individuals (from March 2020-June 2020) -collectively representing an 11.8% decrease among the overall inmate population (March 2020-August 2020) (ACLU Analytics, 2020; Byrne et al, 2020;Collica-Cox & Molina, 2020;Hummer, 2020;Sharma et al, 2020). Staff reviewed offender populations to identify those incarcerated for technical violations and low-level offenses for early release consideration, while similar reviews took place for inmates at increased risk of contracting COVID such as prisoners of advanced age and the immunocompromised (Abraham et al, 2020;Marcum, 2020;Wallace et al, 2021). The risk-need-responsivity and similar models should guide targeted release in order to identify those that pose the least public safety risk, while reducing crowding within institutions to limit the spread of the virus (Vose et al, 2020a).…”

Section: The Justice Apparatus During Covidmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Regulations implemented among the general society were nearly impossible to carry out without adequate space, such as social distancing, given crowded conditions (Abraham et al, 2020;Wallace et al, 2021). Unsurprisingly, evidence indicates that overcrowding within U.S. prisons increases transmission rates of COVID-19 (Vest et al, 2021).…”

Section: The Justice Apparatus During Covidmentioning

confidence: 99%

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COVID, Crime & Criminal Justice: Affirming the Call for System Reform Research

Jossie

Blumstein²,

Miller³

2022

Am J Crim Just

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Early into the COVID-19 pandemic, Miller & Blumstein (2020) outlined a theoretical research program (TRP) oriented around themes of contagion control and containment, legal amnesty, system leniency, nonenforcement, and tele-justice. Here, two and a half years later, these lingering themes are revisited to advocate for empirical research informing criminal justice system reform. The pandemic created rare natural experiment research conditions that enable unique and potentially valuable insights on necessitated innovations that may indicate future justice practices and policies. Given the sweeping effects of the shutdown, examples are numerous ranging from staffing analyses to estimate agencies' personnel needs to ensure that basic public safety functions can be met after early retirements and resignations from virus risk and anti-police sentiment, the use of virtual communication in various legal proceedings at arrest, incarceration, and release junctures, and, especially, the risks versus benefits of early release. In addition to better identifying who should be jailed pre-trial, prioritization of calls for service, triaging of court cases, and hygiene and sanitation issues within facilities are other important examples central to a COVID and crime TRP. Attending research could demonstrate the utility of normative operations and identify shortfalls to be addressed during anomic conditions prior to another shutdown or similar event and present, through comparison of innovative and traditional derived outcomes, system reform and improvement opportunities. By seizing upon rare data made possible by natural experimental COVID generated conditions, researchers can meaningfully investigate the ongoing applicability of justice system adaptations mandated by the pandemic in terms of effectiveness and efficiency toward the interrelated goals of evidence-based practice discovery and justice reform.

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“…1 Only a few years later, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, inducing "a variety of major changes to the operation of criminal justice systems" (Jossie et al 2022(Jossie et al :1244. COVID-19 spread easily among those incarcerated, as well as among those employed at correctional institutions (Wallace et al 2021), compelling a range 1 At the crux of this is theory on the incarceration-crime relationship, which offers competing expectations. Some perspectives suggest that prison is crime-suppressive, arguing that prisons incapacitate the criminally active (Piquero and Blumstein 2007), that the threat of prison may deter criminal activity (Pratt et al 2006), and that prison may be transformative through rehabilitation (Lofstrom and Raphael 2016:198).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The COVID-19 Pandemic, Prison Downsizing, and Crime Trends

Kubrin,

Bartos

2023

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

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California has fundamentally reformed its criminal justice system. Since 2011, the state passed several reforms which reduced its massive prison population. Importantly, this decarceration has not harmed public safety as research finds these measures had no impact on violent crime and only marginal impacts on property crime statewide. The COVID-19 pandemic furthered the state’s trend in decarceration, as California reduced prison and jail populations to slow the spread of the virus. In fact, in terms of month-to-month proportionate changes in the state correctional population, California’s efforts to reduce overcrowding as a means to limit the spread of COVID-19 reduced the correctional population more severely and abruptly than any of the state’s decarceration reforms. Although research suggests the criminal justice reforms did not threaten public safety, there is reason to suspect COVID-mitigation releases did. How are COVID-19 jail downsizing measures and crime trends related in California, if at all? We address this question in the current study. We employ a synthetic control group design to estimate the impact of jail decarceration intended to mitigate COVID-19 spread on crime in California’s 58 counties. Adapting the traditional method to account for the “fuzzy-ness” of the intervention, we utilize natural variation among counties to isolate decarceration’s impact on crime from various other shocks affecting California as a whole. Findings do not suggest a consistent relationship between COVID-19 jail decarceration and violent or property crime at the county level.

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The 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic and Its Corresponding Data Boon: Issues With Pandemic-Related Data From Criminal Justice Organizations

Cited by 10 publications

References 60 publications

Offline crime bounces back to pre-COVID levels, cyber stays high: interrupted time-series analysis in Northern Ireland

Offline crime bounces back to pre-COVID levels, cyber stays high: interrupted time-series analysis in Northern Ireland

COVID, Crime & Criminal Justice: Affirming the Call for System Reform Research

The COVID-19 Pandemic, Prison Downsizing, and Crime Trends

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