Social Solidarity and Crime: The COVID-19 Effect in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago*

Randy Seepersad, Corin Bailey and Lina Marmolejo
Additional contact information
Randy Seepersad: The University of the West Indies, St Augustine
Corin Bailey: The University of the West Indies
Lina Marmolejo: Inter-American Development Bank

Journal of Developing Societies, 2023, vol. 39, issue 4, 421-444

Abstract: Previous studies used the strain, rational choice, or routine activities approach to explain changes in crime levels after the COVID-19 pandemic. Observed changes have not always been consistent with predictions made by these theoretical approaches. This study uses a social solidarity approach which can be used to better explain observed changes. It is argued that national disasters, such as pandemics, can result in an increase in social solidarity which can have a suppressive effect on crime. Official crime data from Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica are used to explore this hypothesis. The results from auto-regressive integrated moving average modeling show that there was a decline in crime in Trinidad and Tobago but not in Jamaica after COVID-19 restrictions. The study argues that social solidarity may have increased in Trinidad and Tobago, but not in Jamaica, accounting for the observed differences.

Keywords: COVID-19; crime; social solidarity; Trinidad and Tobago; Jamaica (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0169796X231209119 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jodeso:v:39:y:2023:i:4:p:421-444

DOI: 10.1177/0169796X231209119

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Developing Societies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().