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. We use ARIMA modeling techniques to compute 6-month-ahead forecasts of property damage, shop theft, residential burglary, fraud, and motor vehicle theft rates and then compare these forecasts (and their 95% confidence intervals) with the observed data for March through to June. We conclude that, with the exception of fraud, all property offence categories declined significantly. For some offence types (shop stealing, other theft offences, and residential burglary), the decrease commenced as early as March. For other offence types, the decline was lagged and did not occur until April or May. Non-residential burglary was the only offence type to significantly increase, which it did in March, only to then decline significantly thereafter. These trends, while broadly consistent across the state’s 77 local government areas still varied in meaningful ways and we discuss possible explanations and implications.

面对迅速增长的感染率，住院和死亡，世界各国政府都采取了严格的收容措施，以帮助减少COVID-19的传播。这种公共卫生对人们的日常生活产生了前所未有的影响，毫不奇怪，在犯罪和公共安全方面也受到了广泛关注。根据环境犯罪学的理论，本研究调查了澳大利亚昆士兰州报告的2020年3月至2020年6月期间正式记录的财产犯罪率。我们使用ARIMA建模技术来计算财产损失，店铺盗窃，住宅盗窃，欺诈和机动车盗窃率的6个月预测，然后将这些预测（及其95％的置信区间）与3月份至3月份的观测数据进行比较到六月 我们得出的结论是，除欺诈外，所有财产犯罪类别均大幅下降。对于某些犯罪类型（商店偷窃，其他盗窃罪和住宅入室盗窃），减少最早可于3月开始。对于其他类型的犯罪，下降趋势是滞后的，直到4月或5月才出现。非住宅入室盗窃是3月份唯一显着增加的犯罪类型，此后此后才显着下降。这些趋势虽然在该州的77个地方政府区域中大体上是一致的，但仍然以有意义的方式变化，我们讨论了可能的解释和含义。下降最早于3月开始。对于其他类型的犯罪，下降趋势是滞后的，直到4月或5月才出现。非住宅入室盗窃是3月份唯一显着增加的犯罪类型，此后此后才显着下降。这些趋势虽然在该州的77个地方政府区域中大体上是一致的，但仍然以有意义的方式变化，我们讨论了可能的解释和含义。下降最早于3月开始。对于其他类型的犯罪，下降趋势是滞后的，直到4月或5月才出现。非住宅入室盗窃是3月份唯一显着增加的犯罪类型，此后此后才显着下降。这些趋势虽然在该州的77个地方政府区域中大体上是一致的，但是仍然以有意义的方式变化，我们讨论了可能的解释和含义。