Essay by Eric Worrall

“… people spend more time outside … they are more likely to go to the beach or to the park … this means that their home will be unattended …”

Crime-ate change: Shock link between rising temperatures and rising crime rates

As temperatures continue to soar, a sobering study has found climate change will be responsible for 72,000 additional crimes a year in Australia.

Adelaide Lang
January 5, 2025 – 5:00PM

Australia will have to contend with an additional 1.64m crimes created by climate change over the course of the rest of the century, an alarming study has found.

Researchers Sefa Awaworyi Churchill, Russell Smyth, and Trong-Anh Trinh came to the staggering conclusion after matching weather data with crime rates over an 18-year period. 

Their paper ‘Crime, Weather, and Climate Change in Australia’ found that increasing extreme heat events in Australia will generate an additional 72,000 crimes per year.

If emissions continue to rise as predicted, those yearly increases will amount to approximately 1.64m additional crimes throughout the rest of the 21st century.

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A study published in 2022 analysed data from 171 countries over a decade and found a positive association between increasing temperatures and rates of homicide. 

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Read more: https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/crimeate-change-shock-link-between-rising-temperatures-and-rising-crime-rates/news-story/dc0d219339b5a4bd9ac179440841696a

The referenced study;

Crime, Weather and Climate Change in Australia*

Sefa Awaworyi Churchill, Russell Smyth, Trong-Anh Trinh

First published: 30 January 2023

Open access publishing facilitated by RMIT University, as part of the Wiley – RMIT University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.

Abstract

We estimate the effect of temperature on monthly crime using a panel dataset that matches weather with crime rates for over 3,000 postcodes in Australia over the period 2001–2019. We find that a standard deviation increase in average temperature is associated with a 0.008–0.011 standard deviation increase in the crime rate, depending on the specification. This translates to over 72,000 additional crimes per year across Australia. We estimate that over the course of the rest of the century, under a business-as-usual pathway, climate change will be responsible for approximately 1.64 million additional crimes.

Read more: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-4932.12720

The study explanation for why crime spikes on hot days are hilarious;

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[T]he likelihood of being punished is a direct function of police deterrence and will be lower if the police reduce their patrolling on hot days. Given that police are paid a fixed hourly salary, if effort is more costly on hot days then a simple principal/agent model would predict that they would devote less effort on days when it is more comfortable to remain in an air-conditioned office or police car.

Temperature can also affect the expected cost of property crimes, such as burglaries, although this relationship is less clear cut. If people spend more time outside their home on hotter days – for example, if they are more likely to go to the beach or to the park to enjoy the sunshine or to the air-conditioned shopping centre to escape the heat – this means that their home will be unattended and reduces the probability that a potential burglar will be apprehended. However, on uncomfortably hot days, people may prefer to remain indoors with the air-conditioning on. If there is a positive relationship between the weather and the amount of time spent outside the home, this is likely to increase the likelihood that crimes committed outside the home will be detected and, hence, increase the expected costs of crime outside the home.

Studies have also documented that temperature influences judicial decision-making and, as such, could potentially affect the probability of being convicted and/or length of sentence and/or fine imposed (see, e.g., Heyes & Saberian, 2019).4 However, the temperature at the time of the trial or when the sentence is handed down is not in the information set of someone contemplating committing a crime and should not influence the decision as to whether to engage in illegal activity (Heilmann et al., 2021).

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Read more: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-4932.12720

The premise that warm weather is a major driver of criminal activity is absurd. Hot climate countries like democratic Singapore, along with Arab gulf states like Dubai and Saudi Arabia, they have no problem keeping crime rates low.

I agree there is a problem with police motivation in Australia, but my personal experience is the poor motivation of police in Australia is not caused by warmer weather.

I live in a quiet rural town, but two years ago, a couple of teenagers rode scooters down the street, stabbing vehicle tires then sprinting off to the next victim. They used a narrow blade, so it wasn’t immediately obvious what had happened.

Everyone was furious, especially after we learned from neighbours one of the thugs had terrified an elderly pensioner couple by menacing them with the knife. People started organising into parties to find the criminals. I said to the police “if we catch them we’ll bring them to you”.

The police officer replied “There is no point bringing them to us. There is nothing we can do about it, they will be out the next day”. Sure enough, a few months later one of the police called me. The police went through the motions, but the judge imposed a non-custodial sentence, the criminals were back on the street less than a week after being arrested.

What would be the motivation for those police officers to endure discomfort on a hot day?

I don’t blame the judge – I’m sure the judge correctly applied the letter of the law. But Australia is signatory to a UN convention which discourages incarceration of minors, which allows hardened recidivist underage criminals to do whatever they want, until they actually kill someone.

Low crime rates in hot countries like Singapore and the Persian Gulf states at the very least prove weather is not the only factor. In my opinion low crime rates in hot climate nations with a strong culture of deterrence is evidence that Western nations could do a lot more to deter crime, regardless of the weather.

The killjoy suggestion that hot weather is a problem, because people are more likely to go out and enjoy themselves, in my opinion puts the onus for behaviour change on the wrong people.