Changes in Crime Rates during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

We estimate changes in the rates of five FBI Part 1 crimes during the 2020 spring COVID-19 pandemic lockdown period and the period after the killing of George Floyd through December 2020. We use weekly crime rate data from 28 of the 70 largest cities in the United States from January 2018 to December 2020. Homicide rates were higher throughout 2020, including during early 2020 prior to March lockdowns. Auto thefts increased significantly during the summer and remainder of 2020. In contrast, robbery and larceny significantly declined during all three post-pandemic periods. Point estimates of burglary rates pointed to a decline for all four periods of 2020, but only the pre-pandemic period was statistically significant. We construct a city-level openness index to examine whether the degree of openness just prior to and during the lockdowns was associated with changing crime rates. Larceny and robbery rates both had a positive and significant association with the openness index implying lockdown restrictions reduced offense rates whereas the other three crime types had no detectable association. While opportunity theory is a tempting post hoc explanation of some of these findings, no single crime theory provides a plausible explanation of all the results. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.