The impact of COVID-19 restrictions on crime and its implications for public health: a case study from a small developing country.

Abstract

Background: Crime has been described as a public health issue in Trinidad and Tobago, a small developing nation. COVID-19 restrictions, aimed at maintaining public health safety by limiting disease spread, may have negatively impacted crime rates due to an alteration of social and economic conditions. This study evaluates the implications of these restrictions on crime dynamics and hence their impacts on overall public health.

Methods: Employing interrupted time series analysis with seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average with exogenous factor (Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average with Exogenous Variables) models, monthly data on murders, sexual offences, and motor vehicle larcenies from January 2013 to June 2023 were analysed.

Results: The study found a decrease in murders and motor vehicle larcenies with the onset of restrictions, followed by an inverse trend correlating with the easing of measures. Sexual offences showed no significant change in response to the restrictions.

Conclusions: While COVID-19 restrictions initially influenced certain crime rates, the effect varied across crime types. Policy interventions based on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic must be done to strategically reduce and prevent crime without having the negative side effects of the pandemic.