COVID-19 lockdowns had at least one welcome upside: a significant drop in crime in cities worldwide, according to an international study, UPI reported.
"City living has been dramatically curtailed by COVID-19, and crime is a big part of city life," said senior study author Manuel Eisner, director of the Violence Research Centre at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
"No drinkers spilling into the streets after nights out at bars and pubs. 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," Eisner, a Wolfson Professor of Criminology at the University of Cambridge, and Deputy Director of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, added in a university news release.
On average, daily assaults in the study's 27 cities fell by 35%, robberies by an average 46%, and other types of theft such as pickpocketing and shoplifting by an average of 47%, the study found.
Researchers analyzed crime data from 27 metro areas — including Chicago; London; São Paulo, Brazuk; Barcelona, Spain; Tel Aviv, Israel; and Brisbane, Australia — and found big declines in most types of crimes, with the notable exception of homicide.
Meanwhile, vehicle thefts were down an average 39%, and burglary by an average 28%.
In comparison, homicides dropped 14% on average across the cities studied.
But the study found dramatic differences from city to city. For example, while burglary rates plunged 84% in Lima, Peru, they rose 38% in San Francisco.
First author Dr. Amy Nivette, of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, noted several factors were involved in the homicide data. For one, a significant percentage of homicides in many societies are committed in the home, SAGE Journals reported.
"In addition," she said, "organized crime — such as drug trafficking gangs — is responsible for a varying percentage of murders. The behavior of these gangs is likely to be less sensitive to the changes enforced by a lockdown."
Nonetheless, three cities where gang crime drives violence — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Cali, Colombia; and Lima, Peru — all saw significant drops in daily homicides as a result of COVID-19 policies.
Overall, stricter lockdowns led to larger declines in crime, and reductions in crime associated with lockdowns tended to be steep but temporary, the researchers reported.
A maximum drop occurred about two to five weeks after a stay-at-home order went into effect, followed by a gradual return to previous levels, according to the report published online Wednesday in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
Criminology professor Eisner said, "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 hot spots such as streets with lots of nightclubs."
The researchers found no link between crime rates and pandemic-related measures such as school closures or economic supports.
"The measures taken by governments across the world to control COVID-19 provided a series of natural experiments, with major changes in routines, daily encounters and use of public space over entire populations," Eisner said.
"The pandemic has been devastating, but there are also opportunities to better understand social processes, including those involved in causing city-wide crime levels," Eisner concluded.
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