Citation

Fansher A, Self M, Zedaker S. Violence Gend. 2023; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Mary Ann Liebert Publishers)

DOI

10.1089/vio.2022.0024

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

For many cities in early 2020, stay-at-home orders were issued, requiring nonessential establishments to shut down. Individuals were confined to their homes for many activities. Reports of interpersonal violence during this time were said to reach concerning levels, but little was being said about sexual assault reports. Law enforcement saw a decrease in reporting but was unsure if this was due to people not leaving their homes or assaults happening in the home, but victims being fearful of reporting until they felt they were no longer "trapped" with their offender. To explore these possibilities, data for this project were gathered from sexual assault incidents reported to a large, municipal police department in 2019 and 2020. Focusing on the time when stay-at-home, or "lockdown," orders were issued within the city, the analysis explores the overall reporting trend, the stay-at-home period, and an equivalent pre- and post-lockdown period for 2020 and the preceding year, 2019. Differences are examined between types of crime reported, victim and offender demographics, victim-offender relationship, location of the offense, victim cooperation, and presence of delayed reporting.

FINDINGS suggest that sexual assault incidents did not increase during the lockdown period, in disagreement with recent studies examining intimate partner violence during the same times. Further, we suggest that in this study site, the increase of incidents following lockdown was a function of well-established weather-crime patterns and not lockdown ending. These findings highlight another possibility for suggested rapid increases of incidents following the end of lockdown periods and stay-at-home orders.

Language: en

Keywords

coronavirus; interpersonal violence; lockdown; sexual assault