Covid-19 lockdowns and other restrictions not only slowed and changed daily life but also changed criminal activities. A new study across 27 cities in 23 countries found a 37 percent drop in police-recorded crime.
Analyzes by criminologists at the University of Cambridge and the University of Utrecht conducted across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East examined the daily trends of crime counts before and after the Covid restraints in the major metropolitan areas of Barcelona, Chicago, and Sao Paulo. Tel Aviv, Brisbane, London.
The severity of lockdowns and the resulting crime reduction varied from city to city, but researchers found that most crimes, except homicide, were significantly reduced at study sites.
Across all the 27 cities in India, including Muzaffarpur, daily attacks have dropped by an average of 35 percent, while robberies (such as theft or mugging by violence or intimidation) have almost halved: by an average of 46 percent. Other thefts, from pickpocketing to shoplifting, dropped by an average of 47 percent.
“City living has been dramatically curtailed by Covid-19, and crime is a big part of city life,” said Manuel Eisner, director of the Violence Research Centre at the University of Cambridge and senior author of the study published in the journal ‘Nature Human Behaviour’.
He added: “…No days spent in shops and cafés or at the racetrack or football match. Some cities even introduced curfews. It choked the opportunism that fuels so much urban crime. We found the largest reductions in crimes where motivated offenders and suitable victims converge in a public space. There would be far fewer potential targets in the usual crime hotspots such as streets with lots of nightclubs”.
The crime rate in London has become very low, with daily robberies dropping by 60 percent, theft 44 percent and robberies by 29 percent. The two U.S. cities in the study, Chicago and San Francisco had the best results in the category of assault, falling by 34 percent and 36 percent, respectively.
Vehicle theft has dropped by an average of 39 percent. Researchers have found that stricter restrictions on the use of buses and trains during lockdowns are associated with a major drop in vehicle theft – indicating that negotiating cities through public transportation is often a prerequisite for theft.
Burglary has dropped by an average of 28 percent in all cities. However, lockdowns affected the number of robbers in different ways from city to city. In Lima, Peru, rates fell by 84 percent, while San Francisco Covid-19 restrictions saw a 38 percent increase in break-ins.
Amy Nivette from the University of Utrecht added: “In many societies, a significant proportion of murders are committed in the home. The restrictions on urban mobility may have little effect on domestic murders. In addition, organised crime – such as drug trafficking gangs – is responsible for a varying percentage of murders. The behaviour of these gangs is likely to be less sensitive to the changes enforced by a lockdown”.
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