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Roberts LE, Mehranbod CA, Bushover B, Gobaud AN, Eschliman EL, Fish C, Zadey S, Gao X, Morrison CN. Trends in police complaints and arrests on New York City subways, 2018 to 2023: an interrupted time-series analysis. Inj Epidemiol 2024; 11:16. [PMID: 38671521 PMCID: PMC11055262 DOI: 10.1186/s40621-024-00501-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/26/2024] [Accepted: 04/19/2024] [Indexed: 04/28/2024] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Public transportation use is influenced by perceptions of safety. Concerns related to crime on New York City (NYC) transit have risen following NYC's COVID-19 pandemic state of emergency declaration in 2020, leading to declines in subway ridership. In response, the most recent mayoral administration implemented a Subway Safety Plan in 2022. This study aimed to quantify the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Subway Safety Plan on rates of complaints to and arrests by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) Transit Bureau. METHODS Using publicly available data on complaints and arrests, we conducted interrupted time-series analyses using autoregressive integrated moving average models applied to monthly data for the period from September 2018 to August 2023. We estimated changes in the rates of complaints to and arrests by the NYPD Transit Bureau before and after: (1) the COVID-19 pandemic state of emergency declaration (i.e., March 2020), and (2) the announcement of the Subway Safety Plan (i.e., February 2022). We also examined trends by complaint and arrest type as well as changes in proportion of arrests by demographic and geographic groups. RESULTS After the COVID-19 pandemic declaration, there was an 84% increase (i.e., an absolute increase of 6.07 per 1,000,000 riders, CI 1.42, 10.71) in complaints to the NYPD Transit Bureau, including a 99% increase (0.91 per 1,000,000 riders, CI 0.42, 1.41) in complaints for assault and a 125% increase in complaints for harassment (0.94 per 1,000,000 riders, CI 0.29, 1.60). Following the Subway Safety Plan there was an increase in the rate of arrests for harassment (0.004 per 1,000,000 riders, CI 0.001, 0.007), as well as decreases in the proportion of arrests for individuals racialized as White (- 0.02, CI - 0.04, - 0.01) and proportion of arrests in the borough of Manhattan (- 0.13, CI - 0.17, - 0.09). CONCLUSIONS The increased rates of complaints to the NYPD Transit Bureau following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic remained elevated following the enactment of the Subway Safety Plan. Further evaluation efforts can help identify effective means of promoting safety on public transportation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Leah E Roberts
- Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 W 168th St, Rm 505, New York, NY, 10032, USA
| | - Christina A Mehranbod
- Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 W 168th St, Rm 505, New York, NY, 10032, USA
| | - Brady Bushover
- Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 W 168th St, Rm 505, New York, NY, 10032, USA
| | - Ariana N Gobaud
- Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 W 168th St, Rm 505, New York, NY, 10032, USA
| | - Evan L Eschliman
- Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 W 168th St, Rm 505, New York, NY, 10032, USA
| | - Carolyn Fish
- Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 W 168th St, Rm 505, New York, NY, 10032, USA
| | - Siddhesh Zadey
- Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 W 168th St, Rm 505, New York, NY, 10032, USA
| | - Xiang Gao
- Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 W 168th St, Rm 505, New York, NY, 10032, USA
| | - Christopher N Morrison
- Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 W 168th St, Rm 505, New York, NY, 10032, USA.
- Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, 3004, Australia.
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Díaz-Faes DA, Vidal-Codina F, Segura A, Aguilar R, Pereda N. How the COVID-19 pandemic hit crime in Barcelona: Analysis of variation in crime trends. EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY 2023; 20:792-816. [PMID: 38602935 PMCID: PMC10014451 DOI: 10.1177/14773708231156326] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 04/13/2024]
Abstract
Objectives To compare the observed and forecasted crime trends in Barcelona, using crime statistics from January 2018 to March 2021. Methods We trained (seasonal) auto-regressive integrated moving average modelling (95% confidence intervals) using daily recorded crimes from January 2018 to February 2020. These models were then used to forecast crime data from March 2020 to March 2021 across four periods (lockdown, summer, fall and winter). Crime data were organized into two categories: property (burglary, theft) and violent crimes (robbery, assault, domestic violence and sexual offenses [rape, assault or abuse]). Results Overall, crime levels for property and violent crimes during lockdown declined sharply from the forecasted levels. Theft, burglary, assault, robbery and sexual offenses exhibited general decreases throughout the study period, with the same sharp declines during the lockdown, progressive recovery in the summer, and steady or slight reductions from fall to March 2021. Only domestic violence differed, reaching the forecasted levels for all periods and surpassing the forecast for summer 2020. Conclusions Our findings show how the pandemic has affected mid-term crime trends. They help to place the measures applied in the last year into context and to determine the most suitable policies to reduce crime during societal change.
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Affiliation(s)
- Diego A. Díaz-Faes
- Department of Clinical Psychology and
Psychobiology, Faculty of Psychology, Universitat de
Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
- Institute of Neurosciences
(UBNeuro), Universitat de
Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Ferran Vidal-Codina
- Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Anna Segura
- School of Social Work, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
- Universitat de Vic – Universitat
Central de Catalunya, Vic, Spain
| | - Raúl Aguilar
- Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalan Police, Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Noemí Pereda
- Department of Clinical Psychology and
Psychobiology, Faculty of Psychology, Universitat de
Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
- Institute of Neurosciences
(UBNeuro), Universitat de
Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
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Zhang X, Chen P. The Impact of Urban Facilities on Crime during the Pre- and Pandemic Periods: A Practical Study in Beijing. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH 2023; 20:2163. [PMID: 36767529 PMCID: PMC9914938 DOI: 10.3390/ijerph20032163] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/07/2023] [Revised: 01/21/2023] [Accepted: 01/22/2023] [Indexed: 06/18/2023]
Abstract
The measures in the fight against COVID-19 have reshaped the functions of urban facilities, which might cause the associated crimes to vary with the occurrence of the pandemic. This paper aimed to study this phenomenon by conducting quantitative research. By treating the area under the jurisdiction of the police station (AJPS) as spatial units, the residential burglary and non-motor vehicle theft that occurred during the first-level response to the public health emergencies (pandemic) period in 2020 and the corresponding temporal window (pre-pandemic) in 2019 were collected and a practical study to Beijing was made. The impact of urban facilities on crimes during both periods was analyzed independently by using negative binomial regression (NBR) and geographical weight regression (GWR). The findings demonstrated that during the pandemic period, a reduction in the count and spatial concentration of both property crimes were observed, and the impact of facilities on crime changed. Some facilities lost their impact on crime during the pandemic period, while other facilities played a significant role in generating crime. Additionally, the variables that always kept a stable significant impact on crime during the pre- and pandemic periods demonstrated a heterogeneous impact in space and experienced some variations across the periods. The study proved that the strategies in the fight against COVID-19 changed the impact of urban facilities on crime occurrence, which deeply reshaped the crime patterns.
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Jossie ML, Blumstein A, Miller JM. COVID, Crime & Criminal Justice: Affirming the Call for System Reform Research. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE : AJCJ 2022; 47:1243-1259. [PMID: 36540611 PMCID: PMC9754992 DOI: 10.1007/s12103-022-09721-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/16/2022] [Accepted: 12/01/2022] [Indexed: 06/17/2023]
Abstract
Early into the COVID-19 pandemic, Miller & Blumstein (2020) outlined a theoretical research program (TRP) oriented around themes of contagion control and containment, legal amnesty, system leniency, nonenforcement, and tele-justice. Here, two and a half years later, these lingering themes are revisited to advocate for empirical research informing criminal justice system reform. The pandemic created rare natural experiment research conditions that enable unique and potentially valuable insights on necessitated innovations that may indicate future justice practices and policies. Given the sweeping effects of the shutdown, examples are numerous ranging from staffing analyses to estimate agencies' personnel needs to ensure that basic public safety functions can be met after early retirements and resignations from virus risk and anti-police sentiment, the use of virtual communication in various legal proceedings at arrest, incarceration, and release junctures, and, especially, the risks versus benefits of early release. In addition to better identifying who should be jailed pre-trial, prioritization of calls for service, triaging of court cases, and hygiene and sanitation issues within facilities are other important examples central to a COVID and crime TRP. Attending research could demonstrate the utility of normative operations and identify shortfalls to be addressed during anomic conditions prior to another shutdown or similar event and present, through comparison of innovative and traditional derived outcomes, system reform and improvement opportunities. By seizing upon rare data made possible by natural experimental COVID generated conditions, researchers can meaningfully investigate the ongoing applicability of justice system adaptations mandated by the pandemic in terms of effectiveness and efficiency toward the interrelated goals of evidence-based practice discovery and justice reform.
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Patton DU, Aguilar N, Landau AY, Thomas C, Kagan R, Ren T, Stoneberg E, Wang T, Halmos D, Saha A, Ananthram A, McKeown K. Community implications for gun violence prevention during co-occurring pandemics; a qualitative and computational analysis study. Prev Med 2022; 165:107263. [PMID: 36162487 PMCID: PMC9507780 DOI: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2022.107263] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/14/2022] [Revised: 08/30/2022] [Accepted: 09/14/2022] [Indexed: 01/25/2023]
Abstract
This study provides insight into New York City residents' perceptions about violence after the outbreak of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) based on information from communities in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings. In this novel analysis, we used focus group and social media data to confirm or reject findings from qualitative interviews. We first used data from 69 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with low-income residents and community stakeholders to further explore how violence impacts New York City's low-income residents of color, as well as the role of city government in providing tangible support for violence prevention during co-occurring health (COVID-19) and social (anti-Black racism) pandemics. Residents described how COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement impacted safety in their communities while offering direct recommendations to improve safety. Residents also shared recommendations that indirectly improve community safety by addressing long term systemic issues. As the recruitment of interviewees was concluding, researchers facilitated two focus groups with 38 interviewees to discuss similar topics. In order to assess the degree to which the themes discovered in our qualitative interviews were shared by the broader community, we developed an integrative community data science study which leveraged natural language processing and computer vision techniques to study text and images on public social media data of 12 million tweets generated by residents. We joined computational methods with qualitative analysis through a social work lens and design justice principles to most accurately and holistically analyze the community perceptions of gun violence issues and potential prevention strategies. Findings indicate valuable community-based insights that elucidate how the co-occurring pandemics impact residents' experiences of gun violence and provide important implications for gun violence prevention in a digital era.
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Affiliation(s)
- Desmond U Patton
- School of Social Policy & Practice, Annenberg School for Communication, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
| | - Nathan Aguilar
- Columbia School of Social Work, Columbia University, NYC, USA
| | - Aviv Y Landau
- School of Social Policy & Practice, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
| | - Chris Thomas
- Columbia Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, NYC, USA
| | - Rachel Kagan
- Columbia School of Social Work, Columbia University, NYC, USA
| | - Tianai Ren
- Columbia School of Social Work, Columbia University, NYC, USA
| | - Eric Stoneberg
- Columbia School of Social Work, Columbia University, NYC, USA
| | - Timothy Wang
- Columbia Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, NYC, USA
| | - Daniel Halmos
- Columbia Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, NYC, USA
| | - Anish Saha
- Columbia Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, NYC, USA
| | - Amith Ananthram
- Columbia Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, NYC, USA
| | - Kathleen McKeown
- Columbia Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, NYC, USA
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Wolff KT, Intravia J, Baglivio MT, Piquero AR. Violence in the Big Apple throughout the COVID-19 pandemic: A borough-specific analysis. JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE 2022; 81:101929. [PMID: 35578726 PMCID: PMC9095435 DOI: 10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2022.101929] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/31/2022] [Revised: 05/05/2022] [Accepted: 05/06/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
In early 2020, the world faced a rapid, life-changing, public health crisis in the form of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The pandemic and its associated social-distancing measures collided with a period of social unrest following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police and persisted for nearly two years following its emergence. The current study adds to existing research by examining the effect of these events on the incidence of violence (shootings and assaults) in New York City (NYC) over a longer period of time, both in the city as a whole and at the borough-level. To accomplish this, the current study draws from publicly available data using series of analytical techniques to account for underlying trends, seasonality, and temperature while also estimating borough-specific effects. Results indicate that the prevalence of COVID-19 cases, associated social-distancing mandates, and the period of social unrest following Floyd's murder were associated with violence in NYC. Further, findings suggest while a number of the factors explored had consistent effects across each of NYC's five boroughs there was some evidence of heterogeneity. The implications for future research on the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kevin T Wolff
- John Jay College of Criminal Justice, United States of America
| | | | | | - Alex R Piquero
- University of Miami, United States of America
- Monash University, Australia
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Affiliation(s)
- Bhramar Mukherjee
- Bhramar Mukherjee is Professor of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Global Public Health at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2029, USA
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Paramasivan K, Subburaj R, Jaiswal S, Sudarsanam N. Empirical evidence of the impact of mobility on property crimes during the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCES COMMUNICATIONS 2022; 9:373. [PMID: 36267159 PMCID: PMC9568967 DOI: 10.1057/s41599-022-01393-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/20/2022] [Accepted: 09/30/2022] [Indexed: 05/17/2023]
Abstract
This paper seeks to evaluate the impact of the removal of restrictions (partial and complete) imposed during COVID-19-induced lockdowns on property offences such as robbery, burglary, and theft during the milder wave one and the more severe wave two of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Using 10-year data of the daily counts of crimes, the authors adopt an auto-regressive neural networks method to make counterfactual predictions of crimes, representing a scenario without the pandemic-induced lockdowns. The difference between the actual and forecast is the causal impact of the lockdown in all phases. Further, the research uses Google Mobility Community Reports to measure mobility. The analysis has been done at two levels: first, for the state of Tamil Nadu, which has a sizeable rural landscape, and second for Chennai, the largest metropolitan city with an urban populace. During the pandemic-induced lockdown in wave one, there was a steep decline in the incidence of property offences. On removing restrictions, the cases soared above the counterfactual predicted counts. In wave two, despite the higher severity and fatality in the COVID-19 pandemic, a similar trend of fall and rise in property cases was observed. However, the drop in mobility was less substantial, and the increase in the magnitude of property offences was more significant in wave two than in wave one. The overall trend of fluctuations is related to mobility during various phases of restrictions in the pandemic. When most curbs were removed, there was a surge in robberies in Tamil Nadu and Chennai after adjusting for mobility. This trend highlights the effective increase in crime due to pandemic-related economic and social consequences. Further, the research enables law enforcement to strengthen preventive crime work in similar situations, when most curbs are removed after a pandemic or other unanticipated scenarios.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Rahul Subburaj
- Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India
| | - Saish Jaiswal
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India
| | - Nandan Sudarsanam
- Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India
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