On the Evolutionary Dynamics of Crime

In this paper, the authors examine the economics of crime deterrence from an evolutionary perspective. A bimatrix game is used to model the interaction between populations of property owners and (potential) criminals, given exogenous levels of public policing and criminal sanctions. A crucial element in the authors' analysis is the private effort property owners exert to prevent theft. The dynamics show that the crime rate is cyclical over time and the average crime rate over the cycle is invariant to the magnitude of criminal sanctions. Furthermore, increased public policing raises the average crime rate until a threshold level of policing is reached where the crime rate falls.