During the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, national police-reported of breaking-and-entering incidents have dropped dramatically, and experts say the trend may stay that way.
An analysis of a recent Statistics Canada report revealed a 22 per cent decrease in residential break and enters in Canada between March and June of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. This data was collected from 17 police municipalities across the country
“It’s very easy to explain rates of break and enter,” says Irvin Waller, a professor emeritus of Criminology at the University of Ottawa. Waller has written several books on crime reduction and says these decreases make a lot of sense and can likely be attributed to two factors.
“On the one hand, you have the opportunity,” says Waller. “In the case of COVID, the opportunity has significantly decreased because everybody is at home. If you wanted to break into an apartment or a house, the likelihood is that there’s going to be somebody in there.”
“The other part of the decrease is that there was a CERB,” Waller explains. “They did quite a bit to provide minimal income to people, so that decreased the likelihood that people were going to turn to crime.”
“That kind of safety net essentially guards against situations of desperation where people have no other choice but to go rob somebody just so they can get enough money to get by,” says Tcherni-Buzzeo, an expert in crime trends and patterns, who also finds the decrease in residential break and enters unsurprising.
“Crime tends to align with routine activities of people,” she says.
“Routine activities theory basically says that, for crime to happen, you need a vulnerable victim, a motivated offender, and a lack of guardianship,” she explains. “So, when these three factors coincide, that’s when you get crime.”
An example of this is when break and enters increased after World War II, as more women joined the workforce and left their houses unoccupied during the day.
Now, Tcherni-Buzzeo and Waller say we are experiencing a cultural shift in the opposite direction as people consistently working from home.
Residential break and enters have decreased by 22 per cent, while non-residential break and enters have only dropped by 6 per cent since 2019. Chart by Natasha Bulowski. Source: Statistics Canada.
Non-residential break-and-enter rates across Canada, on the other hand, displayed minimal change, only decreasing by 6 per cent from 2019 to 2020, according to the an analysis of the 2020 Statistics Canada report.
Waller says this is likely because, unlike occupied homes, stores that are closed, or operating on reduced hours, still give criminals an opportunity to break in when no one is there.
Although these decreases in break and enters make sense, Waller emphasizes that police reported statistics do not tell the whole story, particularly when it comes to property crimes like breaking and entering.
“Police statistics are incredibly unreliable and are driven by victim behaviour,” he says, explaining that people often decide whether to report a property crime based on the value of the stolen items.
“You don’t have a lot of confidence in the police because you don’t really expect them to find what was stolen,” says Waller, explaining why people may not report the theft of less valuable items.
“But if somebody comes in and steals $20,000 worth of computers or TVs, then you will report it to the police because (otherwise) your insurance company won’t repay you.”
Despite the limitations of police reported data, Waller says the trend is still likely accurate and easily explained by the pandemic.
“The clearest legacy from COVID,” says Waller, “is that people are now working from home and likely to go on working from home, so the opportunity for residential break-ins is going to stay low.”