We describe the socio-economic characteristics of street-gang areas in London, explore gang formation dynamics, and analyse the spatial correlation between gangs and violent crime. Gang areas form in areas with higher unemployment, lower education, and a higher proportion of lone-parent...

We document changing crime trends in England and Wales in the context of the current global pandemic. During the first lockdown that span from mid-March to mid-May 2020 there was a decrease in all crime categories except Anti-social Behaviour and Drug Offences. Since lockdown was lifted most...

Empirical connections between local anti-Muslim hate crimes and international jihadi terror attacks are studied. Based upon rich administrative data from Greater Manchester Police, event studies of ten terror attacks reveal an immediate big spike up in Islamophobic hate crimes and incidents when...

Police agencies devote vast resources to minimising the time that it takes them to attend the scene of a crime. Despite this, the long-standing consensus is that police response time has no meaningful effect on the likelihood of catching offenders. We revisit this question using a uniquely rich...

In many historical episodes, the extent of criminal activity has displayed booms and busts. One very clear example is the case of metal crime, where in the face of big increases in value driven by world commodity prices, the incidence of metal thefts in the UK (and elsewhere) rose very sharply...

This paper establishes that ethnicity matters for criminal behavior. Exploiting the gender of the first-born child on fathers’ conviction rates, this is the first paper to document behavioral differences in parental criminality between ethnic groups. Based on uniquely detailed administrative...