The Impact of Lockdown on Police Service Calls During the COVID-19 Pandemic in China

Abstract

Police service calls have been studied widely in the Western context, but they are rarely discussed in the Chinese context. For the context of this study, it is important to note that the Chinese authorities implemented the strictest lockdown after the COVID-19 pandemic began. Drawing on the data from a county-level city in Hubei province, this study examines changes in the quantity and nature of 110 service calls before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The results indicate that the average weekly call numbers before and after the lockdown were higher than during the lockdown. Meanwhile, different call types produced different patterns, though the weekly call totals decreased during the lockdown. There was a significant decrease in crime, traffic, and dispute calls, but a substantial increase in calls related to domestic violence, public security, and other issues. Changes in the frequency of different call types pose challenges to police departments. These findings will have implications for deploying police forces and allocating resources within the pandemic crisis in particular.

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

“…The data utilized for this study are the daily counts of calls for police service that were reported to the local Police Bureau and kept in the Computer Aid Dispatch system (CAD) from an anonymous medium-sized city 8 (M1-city hereafter) located in south China. Although the calls to police data is a subset of all recorded crimes in the city, it does provide a good measure of crime during the pandemic period, one that has been used in other COVID-19/crime-related studies (Bullinger et al, 2020 ; Dai et al, 2021 ). The data includes eight typical property offenses: automobile theft, electromobile (also referred to as electric scooters) theft, motorcycle theft, bicycle theft, theft from automobiles, residential burglary, cyber-fraud, and pickpocketing.…”

Citizen Compliance with Pandemic Rules in China: Exploring the Effects of Emotional States, Peer Influence, and Policing

“…A few recent studies have revealed some general information on policing during the pandemic in China. For instance, one study analyzed changes in calls for police service during the lockdown in a county-level city in Hubei province and found that traffic, disputes, and crime calls reduced, whereas domestic violence and public security calls increased (Dai et al, 2021 ). Other descriptive studies asserted that the police had experienced an increase in COVID-19 related crime, such as producing and selling fake medical devices, price gauging, and online and telephone fraud (Jiang & Xie, 2020 ).…”

Anti-social behaviour in the coronavirus pandemic

“…The COVID-19 pandemic brought dramatic changes to recorded crime patterns and trends in many countries (Abrams, 2021 ; Andresen & Hodgkinson, 2020 ; Ashby, 2020a , 2020b ; Borrion et al, 2020 ; Dai et al, 2021 ; Hoehn-Velasco et al, 2020 ; Estévez-Soto, 2020 ; Gerell et al, 2020 ; Campedelli et al, 2020 ; Andresen & Hodgkinson, 2020 ; Nivette et al, 2021 ; Payne et al, 2020 , 2021 ; Piquero et al, 2020 ; Wang et al, 2021 ). For the most part, lockdowns and social distancing restricted the movement of people in ways that disrupted and caused sharp declines in recorded crime types.…”