An exploratory spatiotemporal analysis of domestic disturbance calls for service in 2020: The case of Tampa, Florida, USA

ABSTRACT

As the world continues to struggle with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been much speculation on the impact of the virus on crime rates, especially domestic violence. Researchers have largely adopted a routine activities explanation for increased levels of domestic violence, where disruptions in patterns of daily life caused by lockdowns increased the opportunity for such events to occur. The purpose of this manuscript was to utilise emerging hot spot analysis to explore spatiotemporal changes in the number of calls for service for domestic disturbance from 1 March 2020 – 31 December 2020 in the City of Tampa, FL USA based on critical time frames for restrictions and recovery. As predicted by opportunity theory, there was a statistically significant decline in the counts of calls over the 10-month period. Additionally, sporadic hot spots were found at some locations during times of heightened restrictions. Locations with sporadic hot spots coincided with census tracts reporting lower education levels; higher levels of poverty, unemployment, single parent households; and more minority residents.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• domestic violence
• routine activities
• opportunity
• domestic disturbance
• emerging hot spot analysis
• spatiotemporal analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Search conducted on September 2, 2020 using keywords “emerging hot spot analysis,” or “space time cube..”

2. As of this writing, data from 2021 were unavailable.

3. In the USA, a governor is the highest-ranking official in a state and essentially serves as the chief executive officer. Governors are granted a great deal of power, especially during times of emergency. A governor may issue executive orders, which are legal mandates that are made without going through a lengthy approval process. Governors have a great deal of discretion in issuing an executive order. With respect to COVID-19, some governors issued very conservative orders restricting the behaviour of citizens, while others (including Florida) adopted more liberal mandates. For more information on the powers of governors, please see https://www.nga.org/governors/powers-and-authority/.

4. https://apps.tampagov.net/CallsForService_webapp/Default.aspx?type=TPD.

5. For more information on emerging hot spot analysis, please see https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/space-time-pattern-mining/emerginghotspots.htm.

6. As discussed by Barboza et al. (2021) the results of emerging hot spot analysis are highly dependent on the selected time step and distance interval. As these parameters change, there will be subsequent changes in the results.

7. A time-step interval of 24 hours was selected given the relative time frames for the various Phases. A minimum of 10 time steps is required for the Create Space-Time Cube tool to run. The time interval of 24 hours minimised the risk of temporal bias by creating time steps that would ensure that each defined time interval had the possibility of including data points. If a time step interval of 48 or 72 hours was used, the resulting time step may introduce temporal bias as some time bins may have no associated data (for example, a 3-day time interval may only include 1 day of data either at the beginning of the Phase or at the end, introducing bias.

8. For more information on the construction and interpretation of space time cubes, please see https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/space-time-pattern-mining/learnmorecreatecube.htm.

9. The default settings were used to optimise the analysis based on the spatial and temporal distribution of events.

10. Recall that Phase 2 had 8 locations with sporadic hot spot trends, totalling an area of 6.96 square miles. There were 21 census tracts that fell within this area.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kim M. Lersch

Kim Lersch, Ph.D., is a Professor in the School of Information at the University of South Florida. She integrates the use of geographic information systems and spatial data analysis to explore the distribution of violent crime, suicides and mental health issues, and other social problems.