How the COVID-19 pandemic hit crime in Barcelona: Analysis of variation in crime trends
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14773708231156326 |
| Author | Diego A. Díaz-Faes,Ferran Vidal-Codina,Anna Segura,Raúl Aguilar,Noemí Pereda |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
How the COVID-19 pandemic
hit crime in Barcelona: Analysis
of variation in crime trends
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
Abstract
Objectives:
To compare the observed and forecasted crime trends in Barcelona, using crime statistics
from January 2018 to March 2021.
Corresponding author:
Diego A. Díaz-Faes, Departament de Psicologia Clínica i Psicobiologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Passeig Vall
d’Hebron, 171, 08035 Barcelona, Spain.
Email: dariasdiazfaes@ub.edu
Article
European Journal of Criminology
2023, Vol. 20(3) 792–816
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14773708231156326
journals.sagepub.com/home/euc
Methods:
We trained (seasonal) auto-regressive integrated moving average modelling (95% confi-
dence 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 cat-
egories: 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.
Keywords
COVID-19, crime trends, lockdown, property crime, violent crime
Introduction
Human behaviours, interactions, and movements are highly intertwined with the
spread of infectious disease (Haug et al., 2020). The global spread of sever e acute
respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) since December 2019 has led
to governments imposing various measures to prevent virus transmission. These mea-
sures have deeply affected social structures and systems, disrupted the different seg-
ments of society, modified human activity, and changed multiple aspects of everyday
life (Leach et al., 2021). Our understanding of these processes continues to progress
slowly through the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic (Perra,
2021).
Once the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic,
governments and other actors deployed a cascade of preventive and reactive public health
and social measures to curb the virus’transmission and relieve pressures on the healthcare
systems and nursing homes. These non-pharmacological interventions, which included
social distancing, quarantine, isolation, lockdown, and other mobility restrictions (e.g.,
curfew), proved effective in reducing the incidence of the virus (Haug et al., 2020).
Díaz-Faes et al. 793
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