The Effect of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the Crime of Theft

Abstract

This research aims to assist the police institution in preventing theft crimes that increased during the Covid-19 period by mapping areas prone to theft crimes based on the incident's location and the level of intensity of theft crimes. This research is empirical, managed quantitatively by collecting data through documentation and literature study. The results showed an increase in the number of theft crimes by 42.65% in Makassar City during the six months of the coronavirus pandemic period. This research also succeeded in mapping the locations prone to theft crimes, mostly in residents' homes rather than in the business center, the central area of money circulation. The research results also show that almost all sub-districts in Makassar City are the places where theft crimes occur, dominated by medium and high categories symbolized by red, yellow, and green color. This study recommends that police institutions pay more attention to residential areas, which are the areas where theft crimes most occur during the pandemic period. Furthermore, this research implies that it can become a reference for the police institution to prepare efforts to prevent theft crimes in Makassar City and other areas during the Covid-19 period.

Measuring the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on crime in a medium-sized city in China

“…In attempting to interpret the various crime reductions in heterogenous community environments, these authors found that the number of inhabitants was the only factor positively associated with all crime types, which indicated that more people staying at home likely increase capable guardianship and served to lower the opportunities for crime. Similar effects were reported by Syamsuddin et al ( 2021 ), in which theft was found to be higher in malls, restaurants, and shops because the places were unguarded. Using block group data from Detroit, Felson et al ( 2020 ) examined burglary during the transition days of routine activity change and found that burglaries kept increasing in the block groups with mixed land use rather than the ones being dominated by residential land use.…”

“…Pickpocketing, though was only reported in a few countries, but a moderate high reduction, was reported in Sweden (Gerell et al, 2020 ). The one exception to this pattern of results was the increase in theft during the pandemic in Makassar, Indonesia (Syamsuddin et al, 2021 ). Similar to property crimes, some types of violence and assault also experienced a decline in the USA (Ashby, 2020 ; Boman & Gallupe, 2020 ; Bullinger et al, 2020 ), Sweden (Gerell et al, 2020 ), Mexico (Estévez, 2021 ; Miyar et al, 2021 ), and Australia (Kim & Leung, 2020 ; Payne et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Yet, there are some limitations to this body of work and some unique opportunities for extension that await the field. The first surrounds the measurement standard, i.e., daily, weekly, or monthly counts of crime was used as the major index to measure changes in crime by type, time, and space (Campedelli et al, 2020 ; Gerell et al, 2020 ; Kim & Leung, 2020 ; Syamsuddin et al, 2021 ), but the assumption that population size remained constant during the pandemic was not always stable. That is, lockdowns and stay-at-home orders are most relevant to individuals who permanently reside in the city, but for non-inhabitants like travellers, flow-in workers, and commuters, they would leave the city and lower the total population level during the pandemic period, such that the crime risk would be distributed on fewer people.…”

“…Theories that were focused on the patterning of crime events, especially routine activity theory (Cohen & Felson, 1979 ), received extensive attention. Extant research shows that the introduction of pandemic-related restrictions (e.g., social distancing, stay-at-home orders, and lockdowns) was followed by reduction in property crime, assault, drug, organized crime, and cybercrime in various countries including the USA, Mexico, Sweden, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia (Abrams, 2021 ; Campedelli et al, 2020 ; Estévez, 2021 ; Gerell et al, 2020 ; Kim & Leung, 2020 ; Kirchmaier & Villa, 2020 ; McDonald & Balkin, 2020 ; Miyar et al, 2021 ; Mohler et al, 2020 ; Payne & Morgan, 2020 ; Payne et al, 2021 ; Syamsuddin et al, 2021 ). Borrion et al ( 2020 ) proposed a resilience assessment tool to measure the impact of COVID-19 on crime and demonstrated it using data on commercial theft in one Chinese city.…”