The Impact of Anti-COVID-19 Measures on Mexico City Criminal Reports

ABSTRACT

From the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, government measures impacted citizens’ behavior, particularly regarding social distancing and confinement. Whether or not these measures influenced criminal behavior is an area of particular interest. Findings, mainly concerned with the routine activity theory, have correlated restrictions on movement and circulation with a general decrease in crime. In this analysis, we use the case of Mexico City to estimate the impact of the national health crisis, and the corresponding government measures implemented, as well as their subsequent relaxation, on the daily crime count for six types of crimes (assault, burglary -residential and commercial-, domestic violence, larceny, robbery, and vehicle theft). We use generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models to control for the volatility of the time series. While there is a growing body of literature that focuses on the study of criminal behavior during the pandemic, there is a scarcity of work that uses time series to analyze the impact of government measures and their consequences on criminal activity. Our results show a significant reduction in criminal reports for the analyzed crimes during the period of strictest social distancing measures, followed by an increase as these were gradually lifted or lightened.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declarations

Competing interests. The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

¹ Crime reports. In Mexico, crimes can only be reported to the public prosecutor’s office.

Additional information

Funding

No outside funding was used to support this work.

Notes on contributors

Carlos Vilalta

Carlos Vilaltais a professor at Center for Research in Geospatial Information Sciences (CentroGeo) in Mexico City. He received his Ph.D. in Urban Studies from Portland State University and his master’s degree in urban studies from El Colegio de México (Colmex). He is a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI) and has been a visiting scholar in Cambridge University, McGill University, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Missouri in St. Louis, Houston, and the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Gustavo Fondevila

Gustavo Fondevila is a professor at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) in Mexico City. He holds a PhD in law from the Buenos Aires University and a Magister Artium in political sciences from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany). He is author of the following books: Political Models of Social Integration (München: Utz, 2002), Institutions, Legality and the Rule of Law (México: Fontamara, 2005), and Criminal Profile (México: CIDE, 2013), and several articles in Mexican and international specialized academic journals.

Ricardo Massa

Ricardo Massa is the Coordinator of the Simulation Unit of the National Laboratory of Public Policy and research associate at the CONACYT-CIDE, Interdisciplinary Program for Studies in Regulation and Economic Competition (PIRCE) in Mexico City. He holds a PhD in financial sciences from the EGADE Business School and a BA in economics from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus. He specializes in econometric methods applied to social sciences and has been a visiting research fellow at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies of the School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) at the University of California, San Diego. He has recently published in Crime & Delinquency, Global Crime, and Policing: An International Journal.