Domestic violence calls to police increased during the pandemic, but actual domestic violence crimes declined, according to new research on Los Angeles.
The paper, written by economists at the University of Virginia and the University of Zurich and circulated Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, examined calls to 911 and the L.A. County Domestic Violence Hotline, along with crime incidents and arrests.
When Los Angeles went into lockdown from March to late May, domestic violence calls to 911 increased 13% compared to 2018-2019, while calls to the hotline increased 152%. Yet, actual domestic violence incidents declined 15% during the lockdown. There was also a small drop in domestic violence arrests.
While seemingly contradictory, the authors argue that the results can be reconciled as it is possible that the “calls came from disturbances or conflicts that were not actually criminal incidents.” They hypothesize in the paper, which has not yet undergone peer review, that the increase in calls may have come from neighbors who “might have been more likely to call police during the shutdown because they are spending more time at home or because of exposure to informational campaigns about the danger of increased [domestic violence] during the pandemic.” It is also possible that heightened publicity on domestic violence increased the likelihood that first-time victims would call the police before the incidents escalated to a crime.
A previous NBER paper examining Chicago found a similar decline in domestic violence crimes during the pandemic. Yet, a study in the journal American Journal of Criminal Justice found that domestic violence crimes did rise in Dallas during the first two weeks of that city’s lockdown.
