Crime

[XenesisMayor 0]

Anyone know how to fix skyrocketing crime levels? I've got a city of close to 60 000 and excellent education, excellent health, fantastic transit and 10 or more police stations. And yet I still have really high crime rates. It's starting to affect my demand.

Any help is greatly appreciated

[DarkEldar 6]

make sure there are no gaps in your police range rings.Make sure they are well funded and are not those small kiosks. Large and small stations are generally the best. Also a prison could help because stations can't hold prisoners. Thats about all i know from my experience.

Also a few city ordirances help reduce crime...

[villagemayor 0]

When you build a police station, there is a new ordinance (neighbourhood watch program). That will reduce crime. I believe airports and university produce high crime. And like DarkEldar says, prisons are very helpful.

[XenesisMayor 0]

My city is well covered with the police stations (I've got around four deluxe police stations placed around my city). I also have the neighbourhood watch ordinance checked off, as well as the junior sports, and all the beneficial ones (reduced pollution, increase education). Transit is well used, and health is good. It could be the universities and airport, but it's starting to become uncontrollable now.

I do have NAM installed. Is it possible that the mod could affect the crime rates in my city? I've been having the same problem with all my previous cities, and I've had to obliterate them all just because of reduced demand and abandoned buildings.

[High5flyier 7]

What is your mayorial rating? If something is dragging down your maryorial rating, bad things start to happen.

[XenesisMayor 0]

my mayorial rating is quite good. So far I haven't received any complaints from the advisors, except the usual "cop unearthed den of crime" message and "sims outraged at traffic problems on local avenue). I'm really starting to think I'm missing a crucial step in building my cities. I'm not sure what it could be though.

[Cornish terrorist 1]

build a prison and if you have already got one make sure it is not overcrowded, if it is then you will have to build another prison to put the extra criminals in.

[toroca 160]

If you have the Legalized Gambling ordinance enabled, turn it off.  That one alone increases the crime rate by 20%.

Beyond that, I'm not sure there's much more you can do that hasn't already been mentioned in this thread.  You mentioned the university and airport, well, those are frequently locations of high crime just because of their lot size.  The way the game handles the crime simulator, larger lots get hit more often by crimes, so the game sees them as being hotbeds of criminal activity, even if the actual crime rate per tile is the same as the rest of the city.  Do you need the airport in the city? If you've got enough commercial cap relief from neighbor connections, you might try removing the airport and seeing how that affects the crime level.

What is your education rating?  The closer to 200 you can get it, the lower crime will drop.  Highly educated sims (especially medium and high wealth ones) have a very low "inherent criminality."

[Spinmaster 75]

Check out this thread at SC4Devotion, explains the "large lot = crime problem" issue (the University, the Country Club, and Airports are among the most notorious).

The simple summary is, the in-game stations - and most built off them - have a very limited radius of effective for the patrol cars, themselves (i.e. "dispatch radius"). Such that it's literally impossible for any crime reduction effect to reach completely into the large lots. The thread I linked goes into more details. Actually even for non "mega" lots it could still be an issue, as the effect of crime reduction does decrease the further away from the center you get... if this is true for the dispatches as well, then even a building within that radius, but for which the center of the building is right at the edge of that radius, could drive crime up a little. Now multiply "a little" by however many "sorta-large" buildings you've got.