Recently, we received notification from the journal's editor that our paper, "Crime in the New U.S. Epicenter of COVID-19" will be published early next year in Crime Prevention & Community Safety! I co-authored this paper with Daniel Augusto of Northcentral University.
This paper considered four major theories within criminal justice: economic theory of crime, routine activities theory, social isolation theory, and structural vulnerability theory. Each theory predicts crime rate changes in the midst of various macro-level events, including COVID-19. The question then becomes whether these theories hold during bouts of intensified infections as was the case in mid/late 2020 in Los Angeles, California.
It turned out that some theories sustained accurate predictions in the COVID epicenter while others did not. A possible next step in this vein of research is to tease-out possible reasons why some theories better predict crime rate changes during intensified conditions such as an epicenter of the current pandemic.
This study was my first foray into time series analysis; I performed forecast modeling for 2021 extrapolating from 2017 - 2020 LAPD crime data. Time series is very different from the more common cross-sectional modeling, which captures a snapshot in time of the collected data. Time series shows trends over time of the interested phenomenon.
Additionally, this is my first publication in a criminal justice/criminology journal. Fraud still remains my research focus. However, it is important to acknowledge that this subject transcends disciplinary bounds.
Soon, I will be pivot slightly from pure financial planning research to financial planning, criminology, and ethics. Most of my research interests lie in these three areas, all of which coalesce together nicely. Most of the website will stay the same, but some parts will change.
Stay tuned!
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