'Paranoid about the pandemic': How COVID-19 brought the 'largest criminology experiment in history'

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Isolation orders, border closures, social distancing and mandated lockdowns will test theories like never before of why crime really happens and how it can be reduced

His lawyer, John Waldron, explained that Zaborowski was “just not handling the pandemic well.”Is it only that? Or, are there real, tangible links between crime and COVID-19?

Even Canada’s worst mass killing has COVID as a possible trigger. In April, Gabriel Wortman was “paranoid about the pandemic,” a friend said, and liquidated his investments and stockpiled food and fuel shortly before he dressed as a cop and killed 22 people in Nova Scotia.Crime in a time of COVID-19: How the pandemic is changing criminality in our neighbourhoods

“The ‘stay-at-home’ mandates brought about the most wide-reaching, significant, and sudden alteration of the lives of billions of people in human history,” Felson, a professor at Texas State University, wrote in a recent paper rallying criminologists around the world to aggressively seize opportunity from tragedy.

Now, suddenly, Felson sees a chance to test this theory with robust global data in ways unthinkable before COVID-19 because, along with illness and death, the novel coronavirus gave us lockdowns.As dramatic a change as immobilizing people in their homes, little actually changed in terms of the broad factors often associated with crime: poverty, inequality, unemployment, biological and physiological conditions.

Vancouver, for instance, was the focus of criminologists in Australia who studied the city’s crime data during the first 12 weeks of lockdown. The researchers found a significant decrease in total crime, but not across all types: there was an increase in commercial burglary, for example. This supports routine activity theory, because closed businesses lack active guardians, namely store staff and customers, who would normally act as deterrence.

From March through June, York Regional Police, north of Toronto, saw a noticeable drop in overall crime. That’s like catnip for proponents of routine activity theory; people at home are the quintessential guardians to deter crimes against a homeowner’s property. Adam Vaughan, a Canadian health criminologist teaching at Texas State University, said stress could lead to crime.

Even so, if these bizarre incidents are linked to uncertainty or stress from COVID, it does not diminish the persuasiveness of his theory, Felson says.

 

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Lol...we are faced with a world pandemic of government CORRUPTION...no shame

COVID-19 didnt cause any of this Those seeking to exploit the pandemic for their own gain did Seeking to protect you rights and what is important to you is not and never has been “paranoid”

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