Recap from my last post, On the Disconnect between Crime Rates and Crime Victimization Risk, Part I
Crime rates based on residential population are an especially poor indicator of victimization risk in cities that attract a large daily population from outside the city limits. In these cities, the population at risk of crime includes tourists and inbound commuters to work.
People at greater victimization risk are residents or visitors who go to places favored by offenders, such as bars, hotels, or crowded streets.
Cities with lots of homebodies may have relatively low crime rates, because most crimes happen outside the home or in unoccupied homes (e.g., burglary). But that doesn’t mean the streets are safe.
If the number of work commuters and tourists change little from year to year, a city’s crime rate based on residential population is still a pretty good indicator of crime trends.
If a city attracts a large daily population from outside the city limits but the inflow of commuters and tourists suddenly plummets and stays low for an extended period of time, its crime rate should go down.
If significantly more residents stay at home, fewer residents will be victims of street crimes.
On the disconnect between crime rates and victimization risk in San Francisco
San Francisco’s post-pandemic population dropped by 6.7% from April 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021 – the steepest decline among major cities in the US. San Francisco reported just 14.8 million visitors in 2021, down 44% from a record 26.2 million visitors in 2019. The city also lost 85,000 jobs during the first year of the pandemic. And a good number of workers stopped coming in to the office - many of whom had been inbound commuters before the pandemic.* Two years later, many continue to toil at home. Hence, San Francisco’s low office occupancy rate:
With so many remote workers, so few tourists, and so many residents still hesitant to venture forth and have fun in the city, it’s no wonder San Francisco is still a ghost of its former self:
The emptying out of San Francisco basically means fewer criminal targets, which should mean fewer crimes and a lower crime rate. And that is pretty much what happened:
Since would-be burglars typically prefer unoccupied buildings, San Francisco’s steep rise in burglaries in 2020 is not all that surprising. And the large rise in auto thefts can be at least partly explained by supply issues, which increased the market for stolen cars. Larceny and robbery are still down from the pre-pandemic baseline, which makes sense since these crimes are often committed in commercial establishments, parking lots, garages, parks, fields, and areas near public transportation - in other words, the type of places that have closed in great numbers or become sparsely peopled since the pandemic began, thanks to remote work, the decline of tourism, and widespread avoidance of public spaces. As for assault, I’m not sure why it’s been steadily rising since 2019 - need more information, e.g., if connected to domestic violence, which has gone up throughout the country, probably related to tensions among cooped up household members.
Here’s the thing, though. San Francisco lost a good chunk of it’s daily flow of commuters and tourists over the past couple years. Almost 7% of residents left town. Many of the rest avoided places known to attract criminal activity. Crime should have gone way down given these conditions. So the question is, why didn’t San Francisco’s crime rate go down even more?
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* In 2018, 351,320 out of a total of 759,875 workers in San Francisco had been inbound commuters.