Graham FarrellUniversity of Leeds · School of Law
Graham Farrell
PhD
About
234
Publications
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Introduction
Graham Farrell works at the School of Law, University of Leeds
Additional affiliations
January 2012 - August 2015
January 2004 - December 2012
September 2001 - December 2003
Education
November 1990 - November 1993
University of Manchester
Field of study
- Repeated criminal victimization
Publications
Publications (234)
Residential burglary in the United States has declined by over 80% across the last four decades, representing a major social phenomenon that remains largely unexplained. International research indicates a need for investigation of the security hypothesis. Here, 50 years of studies are examined chronologically. A consistent narrative emerges which i...
While security devices are sometimes maligned, they offer the most efficient means of reducing crime and criminality. The best security measures activate powerful crime prevention mechanisms and are also elegant, that is, ethical and unobtrusive. A strong body of evidence shows how security measures were responsible for the major and prolonged decl...
This study uses data from Operation Snap (OpSnap), the UK police’s national system to receive road users’ video evidence of road traffic offences. Data from one police force area for 39 months (January 2021 to March 2024) (N = 20,364 records) is analysed. Half were submitted by vehicle drivers (49.8%), a third by cyclists (34.7%), 7.2% bypedestrian...
This study uses data from Operation Snap (OpSnap), the UK police’s national system to receive road users’ video evidence of road traffic offences. Data from one police force area for 39 months (January 2021 to March 2024) (N = 20,364 records) is analysed. Half were submitted by vehicle drivers (49.8%), a third by cyclists (34.7%), 7.2% by pedestria...
My thanks to David Buil-Gil and colleagues for the invitation to speak here today. It is an honour to contribute to this celebration.
As a doctoral student at the University of Manchester in the early 1990s, it was my pleasure to experience a range of crime first-hand. While cycling home one evening in the majestic streets of Whalley Range, I was...
This study of recorded crime trends in England & Wales spans three and a half years, that is, two covid pandemic years from March 2020 and 18 ‘post-pandemic’ months following cessation of covid restrictions. Observed crime rates were compared to expected (based on 5-year ARIMA models) and the ambient population (using Community Mobility Reports). I...
Unlabelled:
Research on pandemic domestic abuse trends has produced inconsistent findings reflecting differences in definitions, data and method. This study analyses 43,488 domestic abuse crimes recorded by a UK police force. Metrics and analytic approaches are tailored to address key methodological issues in three key ways. First, it was hypothes...
Worst. Book. Ever. This book misrepresents from start to finish. It makes no effort to research crime science. There are no references to the journal Crime Science, now in its second decade, to the 22 books in the Crime Science series, to the Routledge Handbook of Crime Science (Wortley et al. 2019), or precursors such as the Crime Prevention Studi...
By July 2022, violence and sexual offences, and theft from the person, remained statistically significantly lower than expected levels, with burglary, car crime, robbery and shoplifting far below expected levels (but falling within the rapidly expanding 95% confidence intervals). The other six crime categories plus anti social behaviour were at or...
Objective
Illegal dumping of household and business waste, known as fly-tipping in the UK, is a significant environmental crime. News agencies reported major increases early in the COVID-19 pandemic when waste disposal services were closed or disrupted. This study examines the effect of lockdowns on illegal dumping in the UK.
Method
A freedom of i...
Anti-social behaviour recorded by police more than doubled early in the coronavirus pandemic in England and Wales. This was a stark contrast to the steep falls in most types of recorded crime. Why was ASB so different? Was it changes in ‘traditional’ ASB such as noisy neighbours, or was it ASB records of breaches of COVID-19 regulations? Further, w...
While security devices are sometimes maligned they offer probably the most efficient means of reducing crime and criminality. The best security measures activate powerful crime prevention mechanisms and are also elegant, that is, they are ethical and unobtrusive. There is a strong body of evidence that security measures were responsible for the maj...
Anti-social behaviour recorded by police more than doubled early in the coronavirus pandemic in England and Wales. This was a stark contrast to the steep falls in most types of recorded crime. Why was ASB so different? Was it changes in ‘traditional’ ASB such as noisy neighbours, or was it ASB records of breaches of COVID-19 regulations? Further, w...
Objective: Illegal dumping of household and business waste is a significant environmental crime, known as fly-tipping in the UK. News agencies reported major increases early in the pandemic when waste disposal services were closed or disrupted. This study examines the veracity of those claims.Method: A freedom of information request was sent to all...
Anti-social behaviour recorded by police more than doubled early in the coronavirus pandemic in England and Wales. This was a stark contrast to the steep falls in most types of recorded crime. Why was ASB so different? Was it changes in ‘traditional’ ASB such as noisy neighbours, or was it ASB records of breaches of COVID-19 regulations? Further, w...
By the end of 2021, many crime types remained statistically significantly below expected rates, including theft, shoplifting, vehicle crime and violence, with robbery and burglary also low. Recorded crime rates per 10,000 population are in orange. Expected rates are dashed line with grey 95% confidence intervals. Antisocial behaviour's return to ex...
On 15 October, the UK's contactless card payment limits (CCLs) were increased to £100, more than treble the pre-pandemic limit (Peachey 2021). This presents a significant crime risk, as we suggested in January (Farrell and Tilley 2021). Here we review the safeguarding measures that were introduced plus related arguments. We find the safeguards are...
Purpose
The aim of this study is to examine small area variation in crime trajectories during the COVID-19 pandemic in England and Wales. While we know how police-recorded crime responded to lockdown policies at the ‘macro’ level, less is known about the extent to which these trends were experienced uniformly at localized spatial scales.
Methods
L...
The third national lockdown began early January 2021 and started to ease on 8th March when schools and limited outdoor social contact resumed. Police-recorded crime rates per 10,000 population (in orange) are here compared to expected rates (black lines, with confidence intervals in grey). Crime effects in January and February 2021 were similar to...
It is well established that COVID-19 policies to restrict movement induced widespread falls in many crime types internationally. Much less is known about variation between areas in how these changes occurred. This study uses k-means clustering to examine local area variation in police notifiable offences across England and Wales. It finds that crim...
Charts show percent change in recorded crime and anti-social behaviour relative to what would be expected without the pandemic, for March 2020 to February 2021. Expected rates were calculated using 5-year ARIMA models. 95% confidence intervals are shaded. This spans first (~Apr-Jun 2020), second (Nov 2020) and third (here Jan-Feb) national lockdown...
Governments around the world have enforced strict guidelines on social interaction and mobility to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Evidence has begun to emerge which suggests that such dramatic changes in people's routine activities have yielded similarly dramatic changes in criminal behavior. This study represents the first 'look back' o...
Dramatic changes in recorded crime rates early in the first national lockdown (March-June), were followed by crime types moved back towards, but often remaining far from, expected levels in summer 2020 (JulySeptember). Turning points in crime in August or September coincided with the reimposition of restrictions. The second national lockdown in Eng...
Governments around the world have enforced strict guidelines on social interaction and mobility in an effort to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Evidence has begun to emerge which suggests that such dramatic changes in people’s routine activities have yielded similarly dramatic changes in criminal behavior. This study represents the first...
Abstract We recently rejected the hypothesis that increases in cybercrime may have caused the international crime drop. Critics subsequently argued that offenders switched from physical crime to cybercrime in recent years, and that lifestyle changes due to ‘leisure IT’ may have caused the international crime drop. Here we explain how the critics mi...
Abstract Adopting and refining O’Brien’s S-constraint approach, we estimate age-period-cohort effects for motor vehicle theft offences in the United States for over half a century from 1960. Taking the well-established late-teen peak offending age as given, we find period effects reducing theft in the 1970 s, and period, but particularly cohort eff...
Nationally, small area (LSOAs) were ranked by recorded crime rate and grouped into deciles. Decile rates are changes relative to the rate expected based on the previous five years.
Key findings:
1. Previously high-crime areas saw the largest crime declines.
2. Previously-low-crime rate areas experienced crime increases.
3. Urban centres saw the gre...
As of September 2020, over 150 coronavirus vaccines are in development, with 9 in human trials and 3 approved for limited use. The world population is 7.8 billion and almost everyone will need a dose, and perhaps more than one. Production knowledge and vaccines shipments will become CRAVED hot products. When this is combined with our existing knowl...
A ‘local lockdown’ was introduced in Leicester city on 29 June: the city had < 1% of the UK population but 10% of all positive COVID-19 cases the week before. We examine recorded crime in July, the first month. Fig 1 shows the most populous 10 cities in England and Wales. In July, total recorded crime increased more in cities other than Leicester....
Different crimes have changed in different ways in the pandemic. Grouping them into broad categories with things in common can help in different ways. It can helps organise our thinking. And the groups can provide insight into how we might go about developing practical responses relating to different types of crimes that have things in common.
Nationally, small area (LSOAs) were ranked by recorded crime rate and grouped into deciles for May 2020 relative to previous five Mays. Decile rate changes relative to expected from previous five years. Key findings:•Previously high-crime areas saw the largest crime declines. •Previously-low-crime rate areas experienced crime increases. •Urban cent...
Abstract Governments around the world restricted movement of people, using social distancing and lockdowns, to help stem the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We examine crime effects for one UK police force area in comparison to 5-year averages. There is variation in the onset of change by crime type, some declining from the WHO ‘global pand...
Some security devices can be ugly, inconvenient or an infringement on civil liberties. This means that security is a quality of life issue as well as one of crime prevention. Here we propose that, in addition to preventing crime and being cost effective, security should preferably be ethical and unobtrusive, aesthetically neutral or pleasing, and t...
The UK government's Covid-19 lockdown strategy has had a dramatic effect on crime. How best can we anticipate and respond to changes in crime as lockdown is lifted? What we know about the impact of lockdown on crime and how we know it Restrictions on people's movements have caused dramatic changes in crime opportunities. Many crime types from shopl...
Governments around the world restricted movement of people, using social distancing and lockdowns, to help stem the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We examine the effect of restricted mobility on crime for one UK police force area. One week after lockdown, all recorded crime had declined 41% with variation by type: shoplifting (-62%), theft...
Drawing on the author’s experience, some of the problems and pitfalls of the university department internal REF (Research Excellence Framework) review process are outlined. Particular attention is paid to problems of bias, abuse of power, and lack of procedural fairness. Citation data (field weighed, FWCI data) is suggested as an additional source...
Security devices are sometimes ugly and psychologically intrusive, inconvenient, infringing on civil liberties, ineffective or inefficient. Such criticisms clarify that security is a quality of life issue as well as a crime prevention issue. Here we propose that, in addition to preventing crime and being cost-effective, security should preferably b...
The 80 percent decline in residential burglary in the United States across the last four decades is a major phenomenon that remains largely unexplained. International research suggests there are grounds for investigation of the security hypothesis. The paucity of general information on household security means the present study identifies and inter...
In recent years, the replacement of vehicle number plates to avoid detection has become a major policing issue. This research sought to explore means to identify false and clone number plates from ANPR images using machine learning methods. The research found machine learning successful at identifying false plates from ANPR images. In an unseen sam...
There has been a steep decline in child arrests in recent years. The Howard League report Child Arrests in England and Wales 2017 attributes this to a Howard League programme of work with police. We show the decline in arrests began well before that programme of work, and conclude the report's claims are unfounded. However, there is strong evidence...
Abstract Recent studies have hypothesised that the international crime drop was the result of the rise in cybercrime. We subject this ‘cybercrime hypothesis’ to critical assessment. We find significant evidence and argument indicating that cybercrime could not have caused the crime drop, and so we reject the cybercrime hypothesis.
This chapter examines the role of security in generating falls in domestic burglary. It begins by briefly outlining some general theories that have been advanced to explain the international crime drop, the basic requirements that must be met by any satisfactory theory and the reason why security improvements comprise the most plausible explanation...
This chapter examines how protection is conferred by different security device combinations. Window and door locks, in combination with security lighting, are shown to be particularly effective, demonstrating the importance of restricting access (by locking windows and doors), simulating occupancy and increasing surveillance potential (using securi...
This collection of essays, published to mark the 20th anniversary of Realistic Evaluation, celebrates the work of Professor Nick Tilley and his significant influence on the fields of policing, crime reduction and evaluation. With contributions from colleagues, co-authors and former students, many of whom are leading scholars in their own right, the...
The research explores why crime rates have fallen steeply in high-income countries in recent decades. Here we address violence, which is arguably the most important remaining area of research relating to the crime drop in relation to the security hypothesis. We explore evidence suggesting that violence fell later than property crime and offer a pre...
This chapter offers an overview of Nick’s career and the book. The first section is a portrait miniature divided into three broad time periods. The first is the Early Years, spent largely at Lanchester Polytechnic studying the work of Karl Popper. The second is the 1990s when Nick, formally working at Nottingham Trent University, was seconded to th...
The ‘crime drop’ refers to the substantial reductions in crime reported in many industrialised countries over at least the past quarter century. Asian countries are underrepresented in the crime drop literature. Little is therefore known about whether the same type and levels of crime reductions have been observed, and if prevailing explanations ho...
This chapter provides examples of the ways in which victimization surveys have been used in environmental criminology to identify spatial distributions of crime and to test and refine hypotheses that speak to these distributions. It first makes some initial remarks on the variations in victimization surveys, which clearly affect what can be conclud...
This study examines the work undertaken by Canada’s National Crime Prevention Centre (NCPC) under the auspices of the Public Safety Canada. NCPC operates with a social development approach to preventing crime, focussing largely on small pilot projects that work with at-risk youth. We suggest that this is a rather narrow definition of crime preventi...
In contrast to the Canadian crime drop of the 1990s, homicide appeared as an anomaly with a peak in the 1970s. Yet previous studies tend to refer only to completed homicides, and here we also include attempts. The resulting trend is remarkably similar to that in Canadian property crime for five decades, including the period of the crime drop. This...
During the roughly fifty years following the Second World War, the best evidence we have from recorded crimes and victimisation surveys suggests that the level and rate of crime rose in almost all countries for which data are available. The increases seemed to be inexorable. Then, first in the United States and after that in many other countries an...
This study measures the effectiveness of anti-burglary security devices, both individually and in combination. Data for 2008-2012 from the Crime Survey of England and Wales are analysed via the Security Impact Assessment Tool to estimate Security Protection Factors (SPFs). SPFs indicate the level of security conferred relative to the absence of sec...
Crime is highly concentrated: Most crime is a rehearsal for further crime against the same or similar targets, at the same or similar locations, and perhaps theft of the same type of products. The study of repeat victimization has evolved into that on crime hotspots and other forms of near repeat, and led to predictive policing. The F-B-I theory of...
This study examines the role of household security devices in producing the domestic burglary falls in England and Wales. It extends the study of the security hypothesis as an explanation for the ‘crime drop’. Crime Survey for England and Wales data are analysed from 1992 to 2011/12 via a series of data signatures indicating the nature of, and chan...
Technology is one of the most important influences upon crime. It can increase or reduce the supply of crime opportunities, and the effect may be intentional or unintentional. With respect to intentional opportunity reduction, security technology has caused much of the major reductions in crime experienced in recent decades. An important aspect is...
OBJECTIVES
Systematize causal accounts of the introduction and uptake of vehicle security measures during the 1990s in England and Wales, and in turn, assess their sufficiency in explaining widespread falls in vehicle theft.
METHODS
We construct an individual-based computational model of the daily crime event choices of potential car thieves oper...
The study adds to crime-drop research examining the security hypothesis. It provides evidence that effective security was introduced for some high-risk vehicles from the mid-1980s in England and Wales and causally connects this to a gradual change in the vehicle-related theft rate. Following three decades of exponential increase to 1987, the rate o...
This article describes realist evaluation research combining data signatures and theories of causal mechanism as a means of shedding light on why crime has declined in recent years. A data signature is an empirical indicator of how or why something has occurred. The use of multiple signatures – a ‘dish’ – from different angles and contexts can, if...
Purpose: Investigate the changes in the spatial patterns of auto theft in Vancouver, British Columbia during a time of a significant crime drop. Methods: Geo-referenced auto theft data, 2003 and 2013, is analyzed considering crime concentrations at the street segment level, kernel density estimation, and a nonparametric spatial point pattern test t...
Despite having endured significant terrorist incidents over the past 50 years, terrorism-specific offenses were not criminalized in Canada until the implementation of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) in 2001. One of the primary goals of this legislation was to provide law enforcement with the tools necessary to proactively prevent terrorist incidents;...
This study provides information to assist those involved in performance measurement in police organisations. The strategies used to identify the literature are described. Thematic sections cover; general overviews; methodological issues; performance management in other industries; national, international and cross-national studies; frameworks (e.g....
Age-specific arrest rates for the United States at the crime peak of the late 1980s and early 90s are compared to those for 2010. Three key features are explored; (1) The disproportionate decline in adolescent offending; (2) The decline in this age-effect up to age 40; (3) Offenders aged in their 40s who in 2010 offended at higher rates than offend...
This study contributes to crime drop research on the security hypothesis. Using data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, it finds that the decline in attempted vehicle-related theft and domestic burglary was delayed by 2–4 years. Between 1993 and 1997, completed domestic burglary fell 21% but attempts by only 2.1%, while between 1993 and 1...
A range of concepts and lexicon of terms denote crime’s tendency to concentrate. The most established are repeat offending, repeat and near repeat victimization, geographical hotspots, and hot products. Complementary terms include hot dots, hot places, hot targets, super-targets, risky facilities, risky routes, crime sprees and spates. This study c...
Approximately one-half to three-quarters of university students commit some form of cheating, plagiarism, or collusion. Typical university responses are policy statements containing definitions plus punishment procedures. This paper collates a portfolio of strategies and tactics that seek to design-out, deter, and discourage academic misconduct. It...
The banning of stolen handsets from networks has been around for 20 years, but remains little used internationally. Where used, its effectiveness is hindered by implementation problems, reprogramming, easy fencing opportunities, and international trafficking. Kill-switches where the user remotely disables a handset and deletes data have potential b...