Drug markets and COVID-19: A spatiotemporal study of drug offence detection rates in Brisbane, Australia.

In many parts of the world, the social mobility restrictions and stay-at-home orders introduced during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic have been associated with significant reductions in crime. However, contrary to this general finding, illicit drug offence detections increased significantly. In this study, we explore the geographical distribution of the increase in Queensland, Australia, using spatiotemporal generalised additive model (GAM) to identify locations in the Local Government Area (LGA) of Brisbane where drug offence detection rates were unusually high during the three months of the COVID-19 lockdown (April-June 2020).

Exploring regional variability in the short-term impact of COVID-19 on property crime in Queensland, Australia.

Confronted by rapidly growing infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths, governments around the world have introduced stringent containment measures to help reduce the spread of COVID-19. This public health response has had an unprecedented impact on people's daily lives which, unsurprisingly, has also had widely observed implications in terms of crime and public safety. Drawing upon theories from environmental criminology, this study examines officially recorded property crime rates between March and June 2020 as reported for the state of Queensland, Australia.

How risky are heroin markets? A multi-site study of self-reported risk perceptions among police detainees in Australia.

Background: There has long been an international interest in the eradication of drug markets-particularly heroin markets-given their documented connection to the deterioration of local community and social amenity. Recent interest in focused drug law enforcement strategies has reinvigorated debate about the potential for deterrence; however, there exists no large-scale effort to document the risk perceptions of those who transact in heroin markets.

Methods: We use data from 2,257 police detainees interviewed as part of the Australian Institute of Criminology's (AIC) Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program.

COVID-19 and social distancing measures in Queensland, Australia, are associated with short-term decreases in recorded violent crime.

Objectives: The objective of this study is to test whether recorded rates of violent crime declined in the context of social distancing regulations in Queensland, Australia.

Methods: ARIMA modeling was used to compute 6-month-ahead forecasts of rates for common assault, serious assault, sexual offenses, and breaches of domestic violence orders. These forecasts (and their 95% confidence intervals) are compared to the observed data for March and April 2020.