| Existing research suggests that COVID-19 lockdowns tend to contribute to a decrease in overall urban crime rates.However,the interrelationship between violent crime and COVID-19 lockdowns is currently unclear.Most compared the pre-lockdown and post-lockdown periods to the lockdown period in Western cities.Few touched on the fine variations during the lockdown.Equally rare was any intra-city study in a Chinese city.Therefore,this paper identifies the following research questions based on the lack of domestic and international studies:(1)What are the characteristics of the spatial and temporal distribution of violent crime in ZG city under the COVID-19 lockdowns? What is the pattern of its evolution?(2)What is the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak prevention and control policy(change in risk level during the lockdown period)on violent crime in ZG city? What is the relationship between the two?(3)What about the impact of service closures on violent crime in the preCOVID-19 and COVID-19 epidemic ? Are there some differences between their impact preCOVID-19 and COVID-19 epidemic?This paper takes the core area of ZG city(including six districts such as WL,XY,ZH,HT,PH and YB)as the research area,takes violent crime as the research object,combines the COVID-19 outbreak prevention and control policy,analyses the spatial and temporal patterns of violent crime in the COVID-19 epidemic and explores its spatial and temporal change patterns through time series and kernel density methods.On this basis,the changes in violent crime in different time periods are further analyzed,such as exploring the relationship between changes in the prevention and control policies of the COVID-19 epidemic and changes in the spatial distance of violent crime through panel logistic regression models.Finally,based on the theories of daily activities,crime patterns and social disorder in crime geography,a theoretical framework for the analysis of the COVID-19 epidemic-crime is constructed,and mobile phone data and POI data are integrated to select community environmental impact factors before and during the COVID-19 epidemic,and a Negative Binomial Regression model was used to compare the impact of the closure of related services on violent crime in the COVID-19 epidemic,comparing the coefficients of the two models before and after to analyze the changes in influencing factors in the pre-COVID-19 and COVID-19,and using a Geographically Weighted Poisson Regression model to analyze the spatial heterogeneity of important influencing factors.The main findings of this paper are as follows:(1)In terms of spatial and temporal patterns of crime and change,violent crime changes in ZG city are cyclical,with the high season concentrated in summer and low in Spring Festival;the overall change trend of violent crime declines,with a slow decline before the COVID-19 lockdowns and a sharp decline in the middle of the epidemic.(2)In terms of spatial pattern and changes,violent crime in ZG city is concentrated and distributed in the central city and spreads to the periphery;in the COVID-19 lockdowns,the low-low concentration area in the central city where travel crime decreases and the high-high concentration area in the urban periphery where travel crime increases;especially around the isolation location,the crime volume decreases and the crime points change significantly in spatial distribution during the closure and control period.(3)Changes in violent crime in ZG are highly correlated with the level of closure,and there is a spatially significant suppressive effect of closure on violent crime in the region.For example,during periods of medium regional risk level,violent crime occurrences will be far away from that risk-covered area;in particular,the suppressive effect of the regional risk level policy on violent crime will last until the first two months after the unsealing,indicating that the suppressive effect of the epidemic prevention and control policy on violent crime continues on a short time scale.And during the lockdown,weekly changes in COVID-19 risk ratings at the district level in ZG city also affected changes in the nearest crime distance.(4)Among the service facilities in ZG city,the closure of food and beverage outlets and bus stops has a significant impact on the change in violent crime.The positive(internet cafes,food and beverage outlets,and shopping streets)and negative(bus stations and schools)correlations of service facilities weakened in the COVID-19 epidemic,and the inhibitory effect of community affluence on the existence of violent crime changed from insignificant to significant in the social environment.Overall,the role of service facilities under the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control diminishes and the influence of the social environment becomes greater.At the same time,there is a large spatial variation in these influences.The above findings provide an important addition to the literature on violent crime research under the COVID-19 epidemic,enriching the application of basic theories of crime geography to violent crime and the relationship between changes in prevention and control policies and changes in crime,showing not only subtle changes during the blockade,but also suggesting higher spatial and temporal granularity for intra-city studies in the Chinese context.In addition to academic contributions,the findings can have policy implications for joint crime and pandemic prevention and control. |
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