Objectives The objective of this study is to test whether recorded rates of violent crime declined in the context of social distancing regulations in Queensland, Australia. Methods ARIMA modeling was used to compute 6-month-ahead forecasts of rates for common assault, serious assault, sexual offenses, and breaches of domestic violence orders. These forecasts (and their 95% confidence intervals) are compared to the observed data for March and April 2020. Results By the end of April, 2020, rates of common, serious, and sexual assault had declined to their lowest level in a number of years. For serious assault and sexual assault, the decline was beyond statistical expectations. The rate at which domestic violence orders were breached remained unchanged. Conclusions Social distancing regulations are temporally correlated with reductions in some violent crimes. Social distancing is likely to have significantly limited interpersonal interaction, especially in locations and at times when violence is usually prevalent.

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Confronted by rapidly growing infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths, governments around the world have introduced stringent containment measures to help reduce the spread of COVID-19. This public health response has had an unprecedented impact on people’s daily lives which, unsurprisingly, has also had widely observed implications in terms of crime and public safety. Drawing upon theories from environmental criminology, this study examines officially recorded property crime rates between March and June 2020 as reported for the state of Queensland, Australia. We use ARIMA modeling techniques to compute 6-month-ahead forecasts of property damage, shop theft, residential burglary, fraud, and motor vehicle theft rates and then compare these forecasts (and their 95% confidence intervals) with the observed data for March through to June. We conclude that, with the exception of fraud, all property offence categories declined significantly. For some offence types (shop stealing, other theft offences, and residential burglary), the decrease commenced as early as March. For other offence types, the decline was lagged and did not occur until April or May. Non-residential burglary was the only offence type to significantly increase, which it did in March, only to then decline significantly thereafter. These trends, while broadly consistent across the state’s 77 local government areas still varied in meaningful ways and we discuss possible explanations and implications.

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Building from the developmental and life course literature and the feminist pathways literature, we aim to detail when and how exposure to abuse in childhood shapes female offending trajectories. Using data from 470 female offenders in Australia, our analyses assess whether internalizing symptoms and drug use help explain the link between early abuse and later offending among females. We then examine whether these links are most acute for females who onset early and evidence chronic involvement in offending. In support of the feminist pathways model, we find evidence for a pathway from early abuse to internalizing symptoms to drug use and then offending. In addition, and in line with the life course literature, we also find important differences in how these risks unfold across women, depending particularly on age of onset and offending chronicity. We reflect on the implications of our findings for theory and intervention with respect to female offending.

At the time of writing, there was 2.9 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 200,000 deaths worldwide. Not since the Spanish Flu in 1918 has the world experienced such a widespread pandemic and this has motivated many countries across globe to take a series of unprecedented actions in an effort to curb the spread and impact of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Among these government and regulatory interventions includes unprecedented domestic and international travel restrictions as well as a raft of stay-at-home and social distancing regulations. Each has left criminologists wondering what impact this will have on crime in both the short- and long-term. In this study, we examine officially recorded violent crime rates for the month of March, 2020, as reported for the state of Queensland, Australia. We use ARIMA modeling techniques to compute six-month-ahead forecasts of common assault, serious assault, sexual offence and domestic violence order breach rates and then compare these forecasts (and their 95\% confidence intervals) with the observed data for March 2020. We conclude that the observed rates of reported violent offending across Queensland were not--at least not so far--significantly different from what was expected given the history of each offence series.

In March 2020, COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic and at the time of writing, there were more than 13 million known cases and more than 500,000 deaths. Not since the Spanish Flu of 1918 has the world needed to respond to the potential threat of a communicable disease with such a high rate of infection and fatality. Using publicly available data, media sources, and literature, this paper maps Australian corrective services' responses to COVID-19. We find evidence of a concerted effort to reduce prison population numbers, as well as to recalibrate corrections practice in an effort to meet new social-distancing rules and regulations. Our analysis is motivated by the knowledge that prior to COVID-19, Australia had a rising prison population, a disproportionate growth in female and remand populations, and significant Indigenous overrepresentation. In this paper, we explore whether the immediate benefits of COVID-19 have helped or hindered efforts to address these wider concerns.