Effects of Pandemic Response Measures on Crime Counts in English and Welsh Local Authorities

The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic between January 2020 and late 2021 saw extraordinary measures such as lockdowns and other restrictions being placed on citizens’ movements in many of the world’s major cities. In many of these cities, lockdowns required citizens to stay at home; non-essential business premises were closed, and movement was severely restricted. In this paper, we investigate the effect of these lockdowns and other pandemic response measures on crime counts within the local authorities of England and Wales. Using openly accessible crime records from major police forces in the UK from 2015 to 2023, we discuss the impacts of lockdowns on the incidences of crime. We show that as time passed and citizens’ response to the imposed measures eased, most types of crime gradually returned to pre-pandemic norms whilst others remained below their pre-pandemic levels. Furthermore, our work shows that the effects of pandemic response measures were not uniform across local authorities. We also discuss how the findings of this study contribute to law enforcement initiatives.