Abstract
For some time, violent crime had been rising across England and Wales resulting in the government’s Serious Violence Strategy 2018. This was set against a background of austerity, but just as re-investment in policing numbers was underway, the Covid-19 pandemic struck. As a result, crime patterns changed dramatically as did policing practices. In this chapter, we analyse the impact of the pandemic on crime figures but also show the development of changing policing practices. Focusing on one region and using the most recent police data from a county police service in the UK that we will refer to as ‘Midshire’ police, it will show how the pandemic saw reductions in many crime types but also allowed the introduction of innovative policing practices such as a public health approach. The pandemic may therefore leave a legacy of more focused public health approaches to violence reduction.
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Notes
- 1.
It is worth noting here another piece of work by YouGov undertaken in 2021 that claims that ‘people continue to support stricter lockdown measures, and oppose most of the measures suggested that would loosen restrictions’ (Ibbetson, 2021).
- 2.
BBC News (2020d).
- 3.
BBC News (2020e).
- 4.
Articles such as Deacon (2020) express this sort of sentiment, with the belief that local lockdowns dramatically increased tensions across the country and tested social cohesion in a way that the national lockdowns did not.
- 5.
See the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Timeline: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/about/timeline.html. Accessed 18 May 2021.
- 6.
See www.cureviolence.org. Accessed 18 May 2021.
- 7.
See www.svru.co.uk. Accessed 18 May 2021.
- 8.
BBC News (2020a).
- 9.
BBC News (2020b).
- 10.
BBC News (2020c).
- 11.
See https://www.dashriskchecklist.co.uk/. Accessed 18 May 2021.
- 12.
It is interesting to note that the Cohen (2021) article discusses the frustration with austerity in a slightly different way, in that the increased austerity and then sudden money available to fund test and trace etc. would lead to a sense of abandonment and increased hopelessness for people.
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Lowe, T.P.M., Prescott-Mayling, L., Gilmour, S., Allum, F. (2022). Violent Crime and COVID-19 in England and Wales. In: Siegel, D., Dobryninas, A., Becucci, S. (eds) Covid-19, Society and Crime in Europe. Studies of Organized Crime, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13562-0_15
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