Pandemic Restrictions and Spatiotemporal Crime Patterns in New York, São Paulo, and Stockholm

Studies are showing evidence of the effect of changes in routine activities due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic on crime levels in many cities worldwide. This study evaluates the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on temporal and spatial patterns of crime in three major cities under very different national contexts. Each of the three countries and cities experienced different levels of pandemic restrictions and societal closure. The cities of New York (the United States), São Paulo (Brazil), and Stockholm (Sweden) were selected as cases. Temporal quantitative methods, spatial statistics techniques, and Geographical Information System (GIS) underlie the methodology used in this study. Findings show that there is a statistically significant break in the trend in crime levels after the stay-at-home orders were implemented in New York City, São Paulo, and Stockholm in the first months of 2020; the only exception was for murder. Such an impact varies by crime type and city context, but increases again after a few months, indicating how fast crime and criminals adapt. Residential burglary decreased, whereas nonresidential burglary increased overall. Changes in the levels and geography of vehicle thefts were observed, with an overall increase of significant cold spots but, in several cases, also solidification of existing crime concentrations in known crime attractors and in some deprived areas.

Where should police forces target their residential burglary reduction efforts? Using official victimisation data to predict burglary incidences at the neighbourhood level

Expected crime rates that enable police forces to contrast recorded and anticipated spatial patterns of crime victimisation offer a valuable tool in evaluating the under-reporting of crime and inform/guide crime reduction initiatives. Prior to this study, police forces had no access to expected burglary maps at the neighbourhood level covering all parts of England and Wales. Drawing on analysis of the Crime Survey for England and Wales and employing a population terrain modelling approach, this paper utilises household and area characteristics to predict the mean residential burglary incidences per 1000 population across all neighbourhoods in England and Wales. The analysis identifies distinct differences in recorded and expected neighbourhood burglary incidences at the Output Area level, providing a catalyst for stimulating further reflection by police officers and crime analysts.

A Case Study of Non-Violent Property Crime Victimisation in a South African Urban Residential Neighbourhood: Exploring the Excessive Use of Force and Destruction Caused by Burglars to Gain Entry to Victims' Properties

Commentators frequently report on the high prevalence of violent crime in South Africa and often label the country as one of the most violent in the world, with a subculture of violence and criminality. This paper focuses on a different perspective, reporting on the excessive use of force and destruction caused by offenders in South Africa to gain entry to victims' properties in the execution of non-violent property crimes, in a particular residential burglary. Literature on property crimes has been considering the aggravating circumstances of violent property crimes. However, the use of excessive force and destruction caused by burglars to gain access to victims' properties in the execution of residential burglary remains relatively untested in the literature. In this light, the purpose of this study is to describe the unprecedented levels of force used and destruction caused by burglars to gain access to victims' properties during residential burglary victimisation in an urban residential neighbourhood in Johannesburg, South Africa. A qualitative research approach is followed. A case study design was used to select an urban residential neighbourhood in Johannesburg as a case study. A data set of (n = 1 431) crimes were purposively selected by means of non-probability sampling. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis was used to analyse the data. This paper offers valuable insight into the forceful and destructive conduct of burglars in the selected neighbourhood and contributes to the body of knowledge by providing an improved understanding of target hardening as a preventive measure against residential burglary victimisation as well as on methods of entry used by burglars in incidents of residential burglary. The results of reported non-violent property crime victimisation incidences by this community's neighbourhood watch scheme suggest that residential burglars in the selected neighbourhood are uncharacteristically forceful and ravage in their actions since they frequently revert to extreme use of force and destruction, disproportionate to the crime perpetrated. It is concluded that this radical degree of force used and destruction caused by residential burglars to gain entry to victims' properties in the execution of non-violent property crimes is not typically associated with residential burglary as compared to countries internationally.

Exploring regional variability in the short-term impact of COVID-19 on property crime in Queensland, Australia

Confronted by rapidly growing infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths, governments around the world have introduced stringent containment measures to help reduce the spread of COVID-19. This public health response has had an unprecedented impact on people’s daily lives which, unsurprisingly, has also had widely observed implications in terms of crime and public safety. Drawing upon theories from environmental criminology, this study examines officially recorded property crime rates between March and June 2020 as reported for the state of Queensland, Australia. We use ARIMA modeling techniques to compute 6-month-ahead forecasts of property damage, shop theft, residential burglary, fraud, and motor vehicle theft rates and then compare these forecasts (and their 95% confidence intervals) with the observed data for March through to June. We conclude that, with the exception of fraud, all property offence categories declined significantly. For some offence types (shop stealing, other theft offences, and residential burglary), the decrease commenced as early as March. For other offence types, the decline was lagged and did not occur until April or May. Non-residential burglary was the only offence type to significantly increase, which it did in March, only to then decline significantly thereafter. These trends, while broadly consistent across the state’s 77 local government areas still varied in meaningful ways and we discuss possible explanations and implications.

Forty years of declining burglary in the United States: Explanation and evidence relating to the security hypothesis

Residential burglary in the United States has declined by over 80% across the last four decades, representing a major social phenomenon that remains largely unexplained. International research indicates a need for investigation of the security hypothesis. Here, 50 years of studies are examined chronologically. A consistent narrative emerges which indicates that household security, largely absent in the 1970s, improved gradually over time. Improvement occurred via several mechanisms: the increased prevalence, quality, coverage, and routine use of security fixtures and fittings. In addition, crime displacement declined over time as fewer households offered easy crime opportunities, and the average age of burglars increased as juveniles found burglary increasingly difficult. Hence the study concludes that gradual household security improvements played a central role in the decline in residential burglary. While the findings suggest a considerable revison is needed to our understanding of burglary and burglars, the likelihood that 50 years of diverse burglary research points in the same direction by chance, and without significant contrary evidence, seems remote. Further implications for theory, policy, and research are identified.

Crime linkage practice in New Zealand

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand (i) how crime linkage is currently performed with residential burglaries in New Zealand, (ii) the factors that promote/hinder accurate crime linkage and (iii)whether computerised decision-support tools might assist crime linkage practice. Design/methodology/approach A total of 39 New Zealand Police staff completed a questionnaire/interview/focus group relating to the process, challenges, products and uses of crime linkage with residential burglary in New Zealand. These data (alongside four redacted crime linkage reports) were subjected to thematic analysis. Findings The data clearly indicated wide variation in crime linkage process, methods and products (Theme 1). Furthermore, a number of factors were identified that impacted on crime linkage practice (Theme 2). Research limitations/implications Future research should develop computerised crime linkage decision-support tools and evaluate their ability to enhance crime linkage practice. Also, researchers should explore the use of crime linkage in court proceedings. Practical implications To overcome the barriers identified in the current study, greater training in and understanding of crime linkage is needed. Moreover, efforts to enhance the quality of crime data recorded by the police will only serve to enhance crime linkage practice. Social implications By enhancing crime linkage practice, opportunities to reduce crime, protect the public and deliver justice for victims will be maximised. Originality/value The practice of crime linkage is under-researched, which makes it difficult to determine if/how existing empirical research can be used to support ongoing police investigations. The current project fills that gap by providing a national overview of crime linkage practice in New Zealand, a country where crime linkage is regularly conducted by the police, but no published linkage research exists.

Data mining to analyse recurrent crime in South Africa

When South Africa is compared to other countries, it has a notably high rate of crime. The country has seen a concomitantly high occurrence of murder, residential burglary, drug-related crime and carjacking (hijacking) crime. The government is desperately seeking solutions that can be implemented to reduce recurrent crime. Several reasons to explicate high crime trends in different areas include alcohol or drug abuse, low standards of education, poor parenting skills and a lack of social and vocational skills. This study aimed to gain better insight into crime trends in South Africa using data mining techniques. Decision-making linked to the data could help the government implement a coherent crime strategy to mitigate crime. The crime dataset chosen for this study was publicly available at kaggle.com. The dataset was prepared using Python programming code. The research design was utilised as an overall strategy to compile all different components of this study with an intention of answering the research questions and attaining the research objectives. To identify the significant changes, ChangePoint Analysis (CPA) was performed to pinpoint the abrupt change in the South African crime dataset. Two methods called Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) and Bootstrap were implemented in this study of CPA. To analyse the trend of data, CUSUM and Bootstrap were performed to measure the occurrence of change points based on the confidence levels. The CPA outcome depicted multiple significant changes and abrupt shifts in several provinces of South Africa. Linear regression (LR) was utilised to predict the future trends of crime in South Africa from 2016 – 2022 based on the erstwhile 2005 – 2015 crime statistics. The results showed that crime has been on the increase in South Africa with certain provinces such as Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal being identified as crime hotspots. Future studies on crime should focus only on one province to gain insight into the dominating crimes and hotspots within that particular province, with a view to developing highly specific crime-reduction interventions.

Testing Routine Activity theory in Mexico

Using a comprehensive victimization survey data set, we develop the first test of routine activity (RA) theory in a Latin American country. Estimating a complementary log–log multilevel model of the theory in several stages, we investigate what factors in the theory predict residential burglary risk. We find that measures associated with the exposure to potential offenders, target attractiveness, target accessibility, personal guardianship, social guardianship, and natural guardianship predict residential burglary in our sample of Mexican cities. As such, residential burglary is a complex crime with multiple factors at play, for which RA theory is a suitable theory given the conciseness of its propositions and operational definitions. We foresee RA theory successfully influencing future studies of crime in the Latin American region.