on research by
DAV I D S . A B R A M S Professor of Law, Business Economics, and Public Policy
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, David S. Abrams was already compiling and analyzing empirical data to better understand the impact of the crisis on crime. Abrams, one of the country’s leading young economists working in empirical law and economics, collected data from 25 large U.S. cities and published his findings in “COVID and Crime: An Empirical Look” in the Journal of Public Economics in which he reported “a widespread immediate drop in both criminal incidents and arrests most heavily pronounced among drug crimes, theft, residential burglaries, and most violent crimes.” Homicides and shootings showed no decline while nonresidential burglaries and car thefts in most cities increased. Abrams concludes that this data suggests “that criminal activity was displaced to locations with fewer people.” Specifically, Abrams’ research uncovered overall crime rate drops of at least 35% in Pittsburgh, New York City, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. He also found that the decline appears to have preceded stay-athome (SAH) orders and coincided with a decline in individual mobility. In the paper, Abrams begins by recounting the sparse contemporary literature about COVID-19 and crime and then looks to the early 1900s to explore the impact of prior pandemics on crime. He shares the findings of a 1919 Chicago Department of Health report, which found a 38% decline in crime rates in Chicago from 1917 to the same three-week period in 1918 during which there was a lockdown.
“This is astonishingly similar to the 35% overall decline in crime in Chicago in the first 4 weeks of the 2020 pandemic, relative to the same period for the prior 5 years,” he writes. Abrams then shares some additional background on crime and the pandemic, noting that generally “[t]he crime rate is a function of available opportunities and expected penalties.” He observes that evidence suggests that police presence and the enforcement of certain laws decreased once the pandemic began, “which would tend to increase crime rates due to the decreased expected penalty.” Due to a drop in mobility and the resulting decline in expected penalty, Abrams writes, “one should expect to see an increase in property crimes like car theft, theft from vehicles, and non-residential burglaries.” Conversely, because people were spending more time at home, a decrease in residential burglaries should be expected. Turning to economic conditions that may influence crime rate, Abrams writes that empirical studies support the theory that a higher unemployment rate impacts property crime the most. During the pandemic, however, a “tremendous government response” in the form of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, suggests that unemployment was “unlikely to have had a substantial impact on crime,” though he still includes the unemployment rate in some specifications. Abrams credits the Open Data Movement with making his research possible. He has also made the collected data available to the public at https://citycrimestats.com. Mobility data (data
“There is a widespread immediate drop in both criminal incidents and arrests most heavily pronounced among drug crimes, theft, residential burglaries, and most violent crimes.”
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DAVID S. ABRAMS
