Higher temperatures increase violent, impulsive crime more than planned property crime.

Heat impairs judgment and allows violent impulses to take over.

Alcohol consumption rises with temperature, compounding the loss of impulse control.

As the planet warms, heat waves and high-temperature days are becoming more common. This is dangerous for your health. As we saw in a previous post, heat might also cloud your brain and result in poor decisions.

It might also get you killed or injured because of poor decisions by others.

In research reported by the World Bank Group, Behrer and Bolotnyy (2024) examined administrative criminal records from Texas alongside weather data and found that arrests increase by up to 15 percent on hot days. The effect was driven by increases in violent crime. That is, burglars do not choose hot days more often than cold ones for break-ins, and pickpockets do not go out more when it is hot. Rather, people more often resort to unplanned, impulsive violence when temperatures are high. As Behrer and Bolotnyy found, higher incomes and newer housing counteract these effects, likely because both factors are associated with access to air conditioning and better cooling strategies.

In another study, Blakeslee and coauthors (2021) used data from 600 police stations in India between 2011 and 2016, combined with daily weather records, to examine the relationship between crime and temperature. They found........

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