Pourshir Sefidi Niloufar, Shoari Nejad Amin, Mooney Peter
Hamilton Institute, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Kildare Ireland.
Department of Computer Science, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Kildare Ireland.
Appl Spat Anal Policy. 2025;18(1):15. doi: 10.1007/s12061-024-09614-6. Epub 2024 Nov 19.
The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic between January 2020 and late 2021 saw extraordinary measures such as lockdowns and other restrictions being placed on citizens' movements in many of the world's major cities. In many of these cities, lockdowns required citizens to stay at home; non-essential business premises were closed, and movement was severely restricted. In this paper, we investigate the effect of these lockdowns and other pandemic response measures on crime counts within the local authorities of England and Wales. Using openly accessible crime records from major police forces in the UK from 2015 to 2023, we discuss the impacts of lockdowns on the incidences of crime. We show that as time passed and citizens' response to the imposed measures eased, most types of crime gradually returned to pre-pandemic norms whilst others remained below their pre-pandemic levels. Furthermore, our work shows that the effects of pandemic response measures were not uniform across local authorities. We also discuss how the findings of this study contribute to law enforcement initiatives.
2020年1月至2021年末，全球应对新冠疫情期间，世界许多主要城市采取了诸如封锁及其他限制措施等非常手段，对市民的行动加以限制。在许多此类城市，封锁要求市民居家；非必要商业场所关闭，行动受到严格限制。在本文中，我们调查了这些封锁措施及其他疫情应对措施对英格兰和威尔士地方当局辖区内犯罪数量的影响。利用英国主要警察部队2015年至2023年公开可获取的犯罪记录，我们探讨了封锁对犯罪发生率的影响。我们发现，随着时间推移，市民对强制实施措施的反应有所缓和，大多数类型的犯罪逐渐恢复到疫情前的水平，而其他一些犯罪仍低于疫情前的水平。此外，我们的研究表明，疫情应对措施的影响在各地方当局并不统一。我们还讨论了本研究结果如何为执法举措提供参考。
