Purpose: To find the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the safety and security of the general public and vulnerable sections such as women and children.

Data: First Information Reports (FIRs) filed in the Police Stations in Tamil Nadu from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2021, relating to complaints of property offences, bodily offences and road accident injuries and deaths form the primary database for the analyses. The other data relied upon in the study includes distress call data from the State Police Master Control Room from January 18, 2018, to December 31, 2021, for the specific category of calls. Further, we use COVID-19 Google Community Mobility Report for Tamil Nadu and Chennai region to seek the change in mobility in six spatial domains.

Methods: The comprehensive counterfactual models adopted for the study includes ARIMA, Bayesian Structural Time Series, Generalized Additive Method, Holts-Winter and Auto-regressive recurrent neural network to predict the daily count of crime and accidents. The causal impact of pandemic-induced lockdowns is measured by comparing the actual/observed occurrences of crimes and accidents with the predicted daily counts. The study is done at two population levels- First for the State of Tamil Nadu, which has both rural and urban areas and second for Chennai City, which is entirely urban. Further, we see the gap between FIR registration and distress calls during the pandemic period.

Results: The property offences decreased during all the phases of lockdown in a direct linear relationship with mobility. However, bodily violations declined sharply during the complete lockdown, but only to increase during partial and post lockdown phases. Crimes against women and children and cases of missing persons and unidentified dead bodies, though, witnessed a downward trend; it was more on account of the ability and inclination of the victims to report. The only positive externality of the pandemic was noted in road traffic injuries and deaths when there was a phenomenal drop in cases directly related to reduced traffic flows. Notably, the steeper fall of road traffic grievous injuries was because the first responders such as ambulance, hospitals, and police were overwhelmed with pandemic-related work. Further, victims probably chose not to report and access the services.

Conclusions: Results have expedited our comprehension of different categories of crime dynamics during the pandemic. This study further highlighted the inherent inadequacies, such as under-reporting of crimes and accidents by victims, especially during the acute and severe phase of the second wave. In this period, the first responders were wholly engaged in pandemic work. The research findings will help us for better preparedness and response to improve public delivery in future emergencies and regular times as well.