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. 2020;9(1):21.
doi: 10.1186/s40163-020-00131-8. Epub 2020 Oct 27.

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

Gian Maria Campedelli  1 , Serena Favarin  2   3 , Alberto Aziani  2   3 , Alex R Piquero  4   5
Affiliations

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

Gian Maria Campedelli et al. Crime Sci. 2020.

Abstract

Recent studies exploiting city-level time series have shown that, around the world, several crimes declined after COVID-19 containment policies have been put in place. Using data at the community-level in Chicago, this work aims to advance our understanding on how public interventions affected criminal activities at a finer spatial scale. The analysis relies on a two-step methodology. First, it estimates the community-wise causal impact of social distancing and shelter-in-place policies adopted in Chicago via Structural Bayesian Time-Series across four crime categories (i.e., burglary, assault, narcotics-related offenses, and robbery). Once the models detected the direction, magnitude and significance of the trend changes, Firth's Logistic Regression is used to investigate the factors associated to the statistically significant crime reduction found in the first step of the analyses. Statistical results first show that changes in crime trends differ across communities and crime types. This suggests that beyond the results of aggregate models lies a complex picture characterized by diverging patterns. Second, regression models provide mixed findings regarding the correlates associated with significant crime reduction: several relations have opposite directions across crimes with population being the only factor that is stably and positively associated with significant crime reduction.

Keywords: Communities; Coronavirus; Crime trends; Pandemic; Sars-CoV-2; Structural Bayesian Time-Series.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interestsThe authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Daily counts per each crime (Entire City)—dashed vertical line indicates date when containment policies began in Chicago (March 16th 2020)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Changes in trends across Chicago Communities—Burglaries
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Changes in trends across Chicago Communities—Assaults
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Changes in trends across Chicago Communities—Narcotics-related Offenses
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Changes in trends across Chicago Communities—Robberies
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
RCE distribution (non-significant vs significant)—Burglaries
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
RCE distribution (non-significant vs significant)—Assaults
Fig. 8
Fig. 8
RCE distribution (non-significant vs significant)—Narcotics
Fig. 9
Fig. 9
RCE distribution (non-significant vs significant)—Robberies
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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