Simulating Crime Prevention Strategies: A Look at the Possibilities

Abstract

While essential, the process of developing and testing crime prevention strategies is currently an expensive and time-consuming process. In addition, there are some potential crime prevention programs that are either too costly or unethical to test empirically. What if we could test these strategies in an artificial world first? In a world of increasingly uncertain resources, simulation offers a promising methodology for experimenting with potential strategies to identify the most promising ones before they are tested empirically. This paper introduces simulation and then explores the potential of and challenges to the use of simulation models to provide valuable information about the potential effectiveness of crime prevention strategies. One potential application of simulation is discussed in detail and several others are suggested.