Minor covid-19 association with crime in Sweden
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(2020) 9:19 Gerell et al. Crime Sci https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-020-00128-3
Open Access
RESEARCH
Minor covid‑19 association with crime in Sweden Manne Gerell1,2* , Johan Kardell2 and Johanna Kindgren2
Abstract The covid-19 disease has a large impact on life across the globe, and this could potentially include impacts on crime. The present study describes how crime has changed in Sweden during ten weeks after the government started to implement interventions to reduce spread of the disease. Sweden has undertaken smaller interventions than many other countries and is therefore a particularly interesting case to study. The first major interventions in Sweden were implemented in the end of week 11 (March 12th) in the year 2020, and we analyze police reported crimes through week 21 (ending May 24th). Descriptive statistics are provided relative to expected levels with 95% confidence intervals for eight crime types. We find that total crime, assaults, pickpocketing and burglary have decreased significantly, personal robberies and narcotics crime are unchanged. Vandalism possibly increased somewhat but is hard to draw any firm conclusions on. The reductions are fairly small for most crime types, in the 5–20% range, with pickpocketing being the biggest exception noting a 59% drop relative to expected levels. Keywords: Corona, Covid-19, Crime trends, Police reported crime Introduction With a new corona virus spreading rapidly around the world during 2020 it has a tremendous impact on many countries, both directly through the disease it causes, covid-19, and indirectly through the measures governments and other actors take to combat its spread. It appears very likely that it will have a large impact on crime, but differently so for different types of crime (Eisner and Nivette 2020). In this paper we will outline how different types of crime has changed in Sweden since March 12th when the first major intervention against covid-19 was implemented and through the following ten weeks. Sweden has taken much smaller measures to combat the disease than many other countries and has not instituted a lock-down nor compulsory closing of schools. Most Swedish interventions are recommendations to the population on behavioral change to promote social distancing. This sets Sweden apart from many *Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Criminology, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
other countries which have affected stricter measures to combat covid-19. The present paper therefore provides a case study of the covid-19 association with crime in a country with less strict measures taken to combat the virus. The impacts on crime in Sweden nevertheless appear to be significant from the onset of major interventions against covid-19 on March 12 through the following ten weeks. We consider changes in total reported crime, outdoors assault, indoors assault, personal robberies, residential burglary, commercial burglary, narcotics crime, pickpocketing and va
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