Warmer winter weather is associated with increased crime – ScienceDaily

A new study published in GeoHealth, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, finds that crime rates in the United States are related to rising temperatures and that this relationship follows a seasonal pattern.

The findings corroborate the theory that three main ingredients combine to create a crime: a motivated offender, an appropriate target, and the absence of a guardian to prevent a violation of the law. According to the new study, during certain seasons, especially in the winter, milder weather conditions increase the likelihood that these three elements will come together and that violent and property crimes will be perpetrated. Unexpectedly, warmer summer temperatures were not related to higher crime rates.

According to the authors of the study, this new study corrects the existing theories that high temperatures generate aggressive motivation and behavior. The new research suggests rather that crime is related to the way in which the climate modifies the daily activities of people.

"We expected to find a more consistent relationship between temperature and crime, but we were not really expecting this relationship to change over the course of the year," said Ryan Harp, lead author of the report. 39; study and PhD candidate at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences of the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It was a very big revelation for us."

Understanding how climate affects crime rates could expand the boundaries of what scientists would consider a link between climate and health, Harp said.

"In the end, it's an impact on health," he said. "The relationship we have unveiled between climate, human interactions and crime will have an impact on the well-being of people."

Regional climate affects human interactions

Previous studies have linked the temperature to the incidence of crime, but none has examined the relationship at the regional level and only a few have controlled the underlying seasonal changes, allowing researchers to identify the potential underlying mechanism.

In this new study, Harp and his co-author conducted a systematic survey of the relationship between large-scale climate variability and aggregated crime rates by region, using a technique to aggregate detailed spatial temperature data. seasonal and crime rates. across the United States.

They compared crime and climate data from the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) of the National Oceanic l & # 39; atmosphere. The data covered 16,000 cities in five defined areas of the United States – Northeast, Southeast, Center-South, West and Midwest – from 1979 to 2016.

Their discovery that violent crimes are almost always more frequent when temperatures are milder in winter was particularly notable in areas with the most severe winters, such as the Midwest and Northeast, according to the researchers.

New discoveries showing that increasing temperatures are more important in the winter than in the summer are interesting, said Marshall Burke, an assistant professor of Earth System Science at Stanford University, who n & # 39; 39, did not participate in the new study.

"The authors rightly suggest that this is more consistent with a higher temperature changing people's patterns of activity, such as a more outward-looking, than a physiological history about temperature and temperature. the aggression, "he said.