Crime in the time of COVID-19: How locking down affects crime trends
The COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges America frankly couldn’t handle. Lockdowns, masking, and changing work environments created a ‘pandemic death spiral’. Not only did this pandemic severely affect our life expectancy it was concentrated in marginalized groups. White Americans losing 1.4 years in life expectancy. Hispanic Americans lost up to 4 years of life expectancy in 2020 alone (Masters: 2022). Huge gaps of inequality growing bigger over the course of the pandemic. Forcing people into ‘essential worker’ status, outside of the healthcare system, generated new economic tensions. Pandemic relief funds were hard to access for individuals who work in lower paying jobs. How did COVID-19 deaths affect crime? Are people who struggle to make ends meet forced to turn to criminal alternatives? Is anger bubbling up in the population manifesting in more crimes against people? One would assume during trying times crime would increase, however, this is not the case for Colorado.
The Colorado crime data tracks crimes against persons and property and drug equipment or narcotic violations. Starting off with the numbers alone there were 15,182 total reported instances of crime in January 2019 and only 9,237 reported in December of 2022. Decreasing almost 40% (5,945 crimes) over the course of 36 months. Is COVID-19 alone causing this phenomenon? A potential bias in this data is the underreporting of certain crimes. A big influence is mistrust of the police, suggesting communities who are already marginalized may underreport. “We’re worried people are afraid to report now that they are in confined quarters, if you will, with a potential abuser or someone who is abused.” Beth McCann, Denver City District Attorney mentioned in a 2020 interview. The lack of mandated reporters and outside space could be detrimental to crimes against person data. This could influence the statistics generated to have slightly more weight, but that is an assumption. One of the three largest total crime low points in the pandemic was during December of 2020 the deadliest wave of COVID-19 in Colorado. 1,891 deaths the month before and 2,959 in December, totaling just shy of 5,000 deaths. Total crimes faced the largest decrease during 2020, yet it was eclipsed by a sharp decrease in the last two months of 2021.
All kinds of crime experienced a decrease in violations, but the highest percentage decrease was drug violations at nearly 60%. Both types of drug violations mirrored similar trends over the course of the pandemic. A 55% decrease ended in June of 2020 (from 2019) and was met with an increase after the lockdown was lifted. Interestingly, legal marijuana sales reached a peak during June 2020. If legal marijuana sales are increasing how does this represent other drug usage? Due to the increase in home privacy, there is potential police have limited opportunities to issue violations. Drug violations increased a few short months in the summer of 2021 and was cut short with the winter wave of COVID-19 deaths starting in October of 2021.
Crimes against person tells a similar story. Experiencing a 19.97% increase in the first month of COVID-19 lockdown. Here is the point where underreporting may have a greater influence. After the original spike, these crimes decrease into October 2020. During the months leading up the Colorado government mandated bars closing earlier, mask mandate extension, and gatherings limited to 2 households. These policies potentially eased tensions because of lower exposure to criminal opportunities. After this decrease there was a gradual increase in crimes against persons until August of 2021. The second wave of COVID-19 deaths crossed between October and November with a total loss of 3,851 lives. Interestingly, this coincides with a sharp 39% decrease in crimes against people. The only outlier in the decrease was subsequently after lockdown, potentially indicating a spurt of violence experienced in Colorado because of severe environmental changes.
The crime experiencing the most oscillation between high and low is against property. Arson, vandalism, and theft are included under the umbrella term ‘crimes against property’. Group crime theories suggest the social aspect of crime can cause people to commit crimes outside of their normal sphere. People have less opportunities to commit crimes and engage in socialization which normalizes crimes. In the first month of onset there was a 27% decrease in these kinds of crimes. There was no correlation found between depopulation of jail and crime rates ruling out the possibility of social learning theory as a result of depopulation. The lockdown potentially severed networking made in jails. Crime was increasing following the implementation of the mask mandate in July and then decreasing in January following the second stimulus check and first wave of COVID-19 deaths. Following January 2021 to May there was the largest increase against all crimes — 87%. For context, the vaccine was just rolling out and the mask requirement was dropped for vaccinated individuals. People can interact again. During this crucial period both crimes against person and property increased paired with small spikes in drug violations as well.
Pearson’s R outlines this phenomenon clearly: in 2021 there was a -.7561 correlation between total COVID-19 deaths and total crime. This negative correlation proved the more counts of COVID-19 deaths there will be less crime in Colorado. Statistically speaking this is not strong, however, it barely misses the threshold of -.80. For the entire peri-pandemic period Pearson’s R was -.63 and for 2020 it was -.53. Although both are weakly correlated, a correlation still exists.
Considering how phenomena such as COVID-19 could change the way we see crime in the future. The effects of socialization, opportunity, and environment are clear on the frequency of crime in Colorado. Identifying a negative correlation demonstrates the affect grief interacts with crime. The pain and hardship created by the pandemic decreased crime rates in Colorado.
