Crime Rates during the Pandemic

最近某些犯罪的上升，比如杀人，吸引了大量的公众关注和媒体报道，却很少对数据、解释或可能的政策影响进行细致入微的讨论。暴力犯罪的增加引发了广泛关注，但对原因或数据需求的严格讨论却很少。犯罪和公共安全对联邦、州和地方官员至关重要，以数据、社会和行为科学为基础的批判性分析将有助于我们国家了解如何最好地制定应对大流行期间犯罪增加的政策，重点是严格政策评估的数据和研究需求。拟议的讲习班将审查大流行期间多种犯罪类型变化的现有数据和分析。关键问题将包括：现有数据的优势和局限性、因数据来源和类型不同而产生的不同结果，以及犯罪率变化与与大流行病有关的人口流动限制之间的关联。该活动将探索现有的解释，重点是为这些解释提供依据的社会和行为理论，这些解释适用和不适用的犯罪类型，以及检验这些解释所需的数据类型。拟议的讲习班产生的会议记录将公开提供并广泛传播，这不仅将使研究人员和决策者受益，而且将使广泛的刑事司法利益攸关方和公众受益。这些知识还将有助于确定未来的基础研究和数据需求。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Recent upticks in certain crimes, such as homicide, has garnered a great deal of public attention and media coverage, with little nuanced discussion of data, explanations, or possible policy implications. The increase in violent crime has sparked widespread concern but little rigorous discussion over causes or data needs. Crime and public safety is of critical importance to federal, state, and local officials, and interjecting critical analysis based in data and social and behavioral science will contribute to our nation’s understanding of how best to shape policy responses to crime increases during the pandemic with an emphasis on data and research needs for rigorous policy evaluation.The proposed workshop will review the available data and analyses of changes in multiple offense types during the pandemic. Key issues will include: the strengths and limitations of existing data, differing results depending on the source and type of data, and the association between crime rate changes and pandemic-related restrictions on population mobility. The activity will explore existing explanations, focusing on the social and behavioral theories that inform them, the types of crime to which they do and do not apply, and the types of data needed to test them. The proceedings resulting from the proposed workshop will be made publicly available and widely disseminated, which will benefit not only researchers and policymakers, but a broad range of criminal justice stakeholders and the public. Such knowledge will also help to identify future basic research and data needs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.