When trying to think about how you might prove this (I'm taking a break from proofreading an acquaintance's criminology paper this very moment), it occurred to

When trying to think about how you might prove this (I'm taking a break from proofreading an acquaintance's criminology paper this very moment), it occurred to me that by virtue of keeping people off the streets, the Internet will decrease arrest and other criminal statistics simply by decreasing exposure to predatory police who have arrest statistics to maintain. Taking that further, it could mean the focus is even more intense on those who do go out, and when you go out. I suppose you could try to measure this by finding historical statistics on where people spend their time, inside our homes our outside. After dealing with confounding factors like decreased employment.