The coronavirus has completely changed our lifestyles and way of life- it begs the question, has criminal activity also changed?

As everyone has been staying inside you would expect crime levels to go down- and it has for Bradford.

Using information from a police database, we compared crime rates in April 2019 to data from April 2020- which was the first month of lockdown in the UK.

In April 2019, there were a grand total of 6987 crimes compares to this year which saw 5680 crimes committed.

The type of crime committed has also changed during lockdown.

Rates of anti-social behaviour decreased at the start of lockdown, as there were 998 reported cases in 2019 and 851 in 2020.

As people are staying at home more often, you would expect burglary rates to decrease- and this is exactly what has happened in Bradford.

There were 459 reported cases of burglary in April 2019 compared to 322 in April 2020.

Of the 322 reported burglary cases in April 2020, only 12 are currently awaiting a court hearing.

Violence and sexual offences also decreased by 12% during lockdown.

Do you remember how hectic supermarkets were at the start of lockdown? One might expect the amount of shoplifting cases to increase, but this wasn’t the case in Bradford.

There were 132 shoplifting incidents reported in April 2020, compared with 326 in 2019.

However, there wasn’t a decrease in every crime type.

Criminal damage and arson cases increased by 36% during the first month of lockdown.

There were also far more drug-related crimes in April 2020 (228) compared with April 2019 (144).

Where are these crimes taking place?

In April 2020, the majority of incidents took place at supermarkets- 93 in total. In 2019, this number was much higher (176).

As they were forced to close, it makes sense that only one incident took place near a nightclub in 2020- this is compared to 8 incidents in April 2019.

The Bradford roads with the most incidents in April 2020 were Adelaide Street (58 incidents) and Alred Court (18 incidents).

In 2019, the streets with the most crimes were Adelaide Street (47) and Leeds road (26).