Understanding changing demand for police during the coronavirus pandemic

​COVID-19 has created unprecedented challenges in the UK and globally. Police have seen new tasks emerge, such as enforcement of restrictions on public gatherings or shielding of vulnerable staff. At the same time, changes in people’s routine activities altered by government restrictions on movement meant changing patterns of crime. The early days of lockdown saw much speculation about these effects on crime and policing, however, not always supported by data. For example, the United States saw no significant changes in the frequency of serious assaults in public, contrary to the concerns of media and policy makers. Other changes have been supported, such as shifts in the types of locations where crimes were happening (e.g. reductions in residential burglary but little change in non-residential burglary). An evidence-based understanding of how demand on police changed in time, place, and nature is important to provide guidance for forces as new restrictions are imposed to control the spread of COVID-19.

To achieve this, we will analyse how demand for policing, as measured by calls for service, changed during the different stages of the pandemic in the UK, including the pre-lockdown period, the full lockdown beginning on 23 March 2020 and the progressive relaxation of restrictions over time. While previous studies have looked at changes in crime associated with coronavirus, only a minority of calls for service result in a crime being recorded and so much police time is spent servicing non-crime demand. This includes dealing with mental health incidents, anti-social behaviour, missing people and traffic collisions, all of which were influenced by the pandemic. These calls are particularly important because they relate to protecting vulnerable people, who may have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and government responses to it (e.g. the suspension of some services, potentially displacing demand onto police).