Pandemics & Crime

The question of, “How could COVID-19 affect crime rates?” probably isn’t one that many people are thinking about at this time, which is understandable, however it is worth understanding how disease, pandemics and our responses at all levels have the potential to increase criminal activity both in the short and long-term. This brief article looks at some of the relationships between disease and crime.

Some law-enforcement agencies around the U.S. are attempting to minimize their members’ exposure to the virus, which makes absolute sense. If an officer is infected by a member of the public on a routine traffic stop, and then returns to the station, there’s a good chance that they will quickly infect others, and before too long there won’t be enough officers available to cover future shifts, etc. This may mean that law-enforcement won’t be turning up in person if it’s a call where a crime has already been committed i.e. it’s not in progress, or it’s not of a particularly serious nature e.g. it’s a low-level property theft which is unlikely to be investigated further, or an act of vandalism, where the damage has already been done, etc. In the current climate, restricting unnecessary human interaction, is largely common sense. This doesn’t mean that the police, operating under these guidelines, will be turning a blind eye to a car that’s mounted the sidewalk, and is hurtling at 90 mph towards a Salvation Army band, etc. where it’s obvious that people are in danger, however they may be unlikely to make a stop for a minor traffic infraction. Unfortunately, the criminal community will soon become aware of this policy change and may decide that the chances of getting apprehended for minor offenses such as shoplifting and pickpocketing are greatly reduced, even if this is not actually the case e.g. many offenders will add two and two together and come up with five; police not physically responding to a call about an already committed crime doesn’t necessarily mean that the chances of getting caught go down, etc. Information that offenders pass between themselves is often subject to misinterpretation, and so any policy change/shift that can be interpreted as law-enforcement overlooking certain offenses will be jumped on by the optimistic criminal as producing more offending opportunities.

We have already seen several hate-crimes committed against Asian Americans, who are somehow being blamed for either the initiation and spread of the virus, or as being genetically disposed to carrying it, etc. Hate crimes are just that: acts based on hate and not on facts/science. Whilst it may seem that these types of crime only affect specific populations, this is not the case, and they can have a serious effect on raising overall crime-rates, that end up affecting everybody. Although not conclusive, it is widely acknowledged that strong social networks and social cohesion prevent and reduce crime i.e. when offenders believe that a community has strong social ties, that everybody is looking out for each other, this causes a reduction in crime rates. When incidents such as hate crimes occur in a community, this may signal to potential offenders that there is a lack of social cohesion and collective efficacy, which ends up encouraging other criminal activities. If bad people, see bad people committing crime and getting away with it, it encourages them to act. Also, those who commit hate crimes operate as if they have been given a green-light to commit other offenses e.g. somebody who attacks another person based on their ethnicity, etc., and either gets away with it and/or receives some type of positive feedback on social media, etc., is likely to believe that other criminal actions they may engage in will also be condoned.

There are several ways that risk can be analyzed e.g. you can use narrative approaches, where you imagine and create possible stories and narratives at both the micro, meso and macro levels e.g. at the macro-level you may imagine the impact of switching vaccine research and production to focus on the present epidemic and/or how people may respond to a travel ban, whilst at the micro-level you may imagine how people may react, when they no longer have access to food, due to shops closing and/or losing work because of the epidemic, etc. All of this can then be plotted on a timeline. You could then take these decision points and map them as critical variables and use a computational approach to calculate the likelihood and scale of these events occurring. You might build into these models government/policy makers’ actions and responses, such as what the effect will be of banning public gatherings over a certain size, or what the effect will be if there aren’t enough resources to treat infected individuals; could this lead to civil unrest, and rioting if people looking for treatment have to be turned away, and will there be enough healthy law-enforcement personnel to maintain law and order? Although this type of risk analysis usually occurs at the national level, by conducting our own narrative analysis we can often predict the types of policies and directives that are going to be put into place e.g. it was fairly obvious that at some point large public gatherings would be restricted, and then at some other point the size of such gatherings would be further reduced. By making such a narrative risk analysis in the very early stages of a crisis, it may be possible to stay somewhat ahead of the curve, such as by buying flu and cold medication, and stocking up on essentials over time, rather suddenly going into panic mode, that sees you standing in a crowded check out line, raising your chances of getting infected.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will be felt throughout our society, and will undoubtedly influence crime rates to some degree, even if this is not directly e.g. if the economy starts to slow down or move into recession due to the effects of lockdowns, etc., crime rates are likely to go up – this is partly the result of consumers looking for cheaper commercial goods creating a market for items that have been stolen. Whilst normally an individual may not wish to run the risk of buying/handling stolen goods, when money is tight, the risk may seem worth it. Whilst it is likely that the next few weeks will give us a better idea of the degree and scale of the spread of the virus in our locales, it may be worth us all running through various risk narratives, concerning public policies and directives, so that we are better prepared and less likely to engage in activities motivated by panic.