An ABM using awareness space to study possible police effects on distance decay

Research in the area of geographic criminology repeatedly found that most offenders commit their crimes near home and that crime wanes with distance. This has been called the distance decay pattern and counts as one of criminology’s stylized facts. However, such conclusions are mostly drawn from official crime data, which do not constitute a random sample of crime in general. If police have difficulties catching more mobile offenders, we may in fact be measuring the distance decay pattern of police operations instead of offending behaviour. In this paper, we use agent-based modelling (ABM) to study under what conditions distance decay is generated or strengthened. Using awareness space as the basic assumption of our model, we study: 1) its relation to distance decay; 2) the influence of different forms of police communication on the same distance decay pattern; and 3) whether aggregate distance decay has to correspond with intra-individual patterns of distance decay.Research in the area of geographic criminology repeatedly found that most offenders commit their crimes near home and that crime wanes with distance. This has been called the distance decay pattern and counts as one of criminology’s stylized facts. However, such conclusions are mostly drawn from official crime data, which do not constitute a random sample of crime in general. If police have difficulties catching more mobile offenders, we may in fact be measuring the distance decay pattern of police operations instead of offending behaviour. In this paper, we use agent-based modelling (ABM) to study under what conditions distance decay is generated or strengthened. Using awareness space as the basic assumption of our model, we study: 1) its relation to distance decay; 2) the influence of different forms of police communication on the same distance decay pattern; and 3) whether aggregate distance decay has to correspond with intra-individual patterns of distance decay.C