Hurricanes and Crime

Natural disasters bring shock, trauma, and disorder to communities and often arrive with limited warning. Hurricanes are no exception. The annual tropical storm and hurricane season runs from June through the end of November, and since the turn of the century, Hurricanes have increased in frequency and magnitude, increasing the social, structural, and economic devastation they leave in their wake in the populous coastal areas. 

Figures 1 and 2 show data from NOAA NCEI describing the increasing count and cost of hurricanes in America since 1980. 

The United States is a significantly coastal nation, and according to U.S. Census data, approximately 18.5% of Americans, or some 60.2 million people, live and work on the coastline of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, where there is a yearly risk of hurricanes. 

Do natural disasters increase crime rates?

Among the disorder, chaos, and sorrow brought about by a hurricane, there is also a fervent debate regarding crime. Media footage often highlights post-disaster looting. However, interpretations of both Routine Activities Theory and Social Disorganization theory suggest the panic and disorder brought about by natural disasters would likely produce sharp upticks in criminality, particularly in terms of property crime. 

Running counter to these interpretations, many social scientists argue that natural disasters produce largely prosocial behavior, encouraging altruism and empathetic communal behaviors that strengthen informal guardianship and reduce and stabilize crime during the emergency and recovery phases of a natural disaster.

Fritz (1961) suggests that community post-disaster behavior is adaptive and aimed towards the safety of others and the restoration of community life. They argue that social divisions tend to dissolve in an aftermath of a disaster and that the public nature of disaster associated loss and suffering become public as opposed to private. The visibility of suffering increases empathy and encourages cooperation towards shared pragmatic goals like rescue and debris clearance. 

Crime statistics can be frustrated in the context of hurricanes and other significant disasters. Disasters disrupt and reprioritize local law enforcement; they also disrupt the formal channels for reporting crime to police. This shift in law enforcement priorities can strain the likelihood of crimes being reported to police, exacerbating problems of underreporting.

Short- and long-term effects of natural disasters on crime

To shed some empirical light on the debate of natural disasters and crime, numerous research papers have explored the short and long-term effects of natural disasters on crime rates. Researchers use statistics from several years preceding the event as well as several years following the event, enabling understanding of the local crime situation and trends prior to the disaster event. The years following can offer an indication of how disasters might’ve altered a community’s crime risk trajectory. 

Zahran et al (2009) used Florida county crime data from 1991 to 2005 to assess the short and long-term impacts of natural disasters on crime. From 1990-2005, Florida experienced 34 separate major disasters. Since the turn of the century, Florida has had 22 named Hurricanes that each produced over 1 billion dollars in damages. Florida was also appealing to researchers because of the scope of communities across the state exposed to disaster conditions, varying widely in terms of income, social cohesion, and crime rates. 

Analyzing factors, which included population growth, economic capital, the density of law enforcement and local nonprofit organizations, as well as measurements of the frequency and severity of each disaster incident, Zahran et al found that the average county in Florida experiences a major disaster approximately once every two years.  

In analysis of crime and disaster data spanning over a decade, Zahran et al found results suggesting that natural disasters decreased the volume of crime generally. Through the lens of Routine Activity Theory, this might be the result of increased guardianship, in which people hunkered down in their homes waiting out storms provide less opportunity for property crime. Additionally, many businesses secure their locations, or invest in additional security precautions, in preparation for the storm. 

Crime rates surge, spike, and settle

Characteristics of individual storms and the given circumstances of a city leading up to a storm can produce discernible spikes in crime. In a variety of papers, Kelly Frailing identifies a series of circumstances in New Orleans that led to various negative outcomes following Hurricane Katrina, including post-storm looting, population loss, low-wages, high-unemployment, and high-poverty rates. Additionally, Frailing and Harper (2010,2012) found an almost 200% increase in burglary the month following Hurricane Katrina, as compared to the month prior. 

Work by Leitner and Guo (2013) support these conclusions, finding that in September 2005, the month immediately following Hurricane Katrina, burglaries surged across the entire state of Louisiana, before decreasing back towards normal levels. 

Leitner and Helbich (2011) also found a strong short-term increase in burglaries and auto thefts in Houston, Texas, which lasted from a few days before and after the landfall of Hurricane Rita in September 2005. They also found a short spike in burglaries, which began after mandatory evacuation orders were issued. Leitner and Helbich concluded that the burglaries were committed by individuals who did not heed the evacuation orders and subsequently targeted the homes of people who had evacuated.  

New Orleans experienced a two-year surge in the per capita murder rate following Hurricane Katrina. The surge in rate was produced largely by people displaced by the storm, resulting in a smaller total population. However, Frailing (2015) noted increased gun violence surrounding the resettling and shifting of New Orleans drug markets during this period, which also contributed to the elevated rate.  

Undoubtedly, the incidence of a hurricane, particularly of the magnitude to garner a Presidential disaster declaration, produces a severe disruption on community life. Recovery can take months, if not years, to return to some sense of normalcy. Witnessing from afar, we will also tend to associate hurricanes and their aftermath with opportunistic looting and waves of associated crime, and on this extant scholarship splits in some different directions. 

The complexity of crime statistics following major disasters

Analysis of crime in locations struck by Hurricanes and other major disasters continues to be a complex topic. Extensive scholarship has demonstrated that many disasters do, in fact, produce widely pro social behaviors, where informal guardianship and communal behaviors produce a reduction in crime behaviors during the emergency and initial recovery stages. There is also scholarship that supports broader pessimistic expectations for human behavior in times of crisis, which has been infamously documented regarding Hurricane Katrina, and seems to suggest that the pre-storm circumstances of a community, or a particularly devasting disaster, can encourage crime in response to a disaster. 

Possessing a salient understanding of local crime risk and other extenuating circumstances before a storm can help organizations and decision makers understand and prepare for worst case scenario risks, taking appropriate precautions to protect personnel and property and facilitating quick recovery in the wake of incredible calamity.