Crime Rates during the Pandemic

Recent upticks in certain crimes, such as homicide, has garnered a great deal of public attention and media coverage, with little nuanced discussion of data, explanations, or possible policy implications. The increase in violent crime has sparked widespread concern but little rigorous discussion over causes or data needs. Crime and public safety is of critical importance to federal, state, and local officials, and interjecting critical analysis based in data and social and behavioral science will contribute to our nation's understanding of how best to shape policy responses to crime increases during the pandemic with an emphasis on data and research needs for rigorous policy evaluation.

The proposed workshop will review the available data and analyses of changes in multiple offense types during the pandemic. Key issues will include: the strengths and limitations of existing data, differing results depending on the source and type of data, and the association between crime rate changes and pandemic-related restrictions on population mobility. The activity will explore existing explanations, focusing on the social and behavioral theories that inform them, the types of crime to which they do and do not apply, and the types of data needed to test them. The proceedings resulting from the proposed workshop will be made publicly available and widely disseminated, which will benefit not only researchers and policymakers, but a broad range of criminal justice stakeholders and the public. Such knowledge will also help to identify future basic research and data needs.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.