Routine Activities Theory

Agent based simulation of routine activity with guardian patrolling strategies
Amrutha S Department of Computer science & engineering
Royal College of engineering and technology, Thrissur, Kerala, India [e-mail] Abstract- Routine activity theory and social learning theory are two most important aspects of criminal psychology. Routine activity theory states that criminal acts are caused due to the presence of criminals, victims and the absence of guardians in time and place. As the number of collision of these elements in place and time increases, criminal acts will also increase even if the number of criminals or civilians remains the same within the vicinity of a city. Street robbery is a typical example of routine

Cohen. Routine activity theory premise is that crime is relatively unaffected by social causes such as poverty, inequality, unemployment. According to RAT for crime to be committed, three aspects are needed: a motivated criminal, a suitable victim and the lack of capable guardian. Lack of a capable guardian can range to anything that would make a suitable victim easier to victimize. Street robbery is a daily crime which can be avoided with simple precautions. The incidents of street robbery constitute about 44% of all robberies. It can be violent or non-violent. It can happen to anyone under certain conditions defined by routine activity theory.
This simulation considers the occurrence and outcomes of typical street robbery and then by operationalizing routine activity theory. Unlike the previous works in the agent based simulation, this simulation has a learning module which guides the random walk of agents and their decisions. The simulation also experiments in the timing of crime. Several attributes of each person involving in a crime situation, social and individual effects on crime and several rules guiding to occurrence of crime are simulated using a multi-agent simulation toolkit NetLogo and results are

There are several circumstances which can influence choice of the crime place like, presence of police, number and type of civilians, presence of other criminal, gang formation among criminals etc. After a few crimes with the help of gang, the criminal will be able to do crime without forming gangs. Each criminal gets a fixed reward after crime.
Civilians agents and learning
Civilians are agents who walks around the street and gets robbed by criminals. Civilians can be of three types – people with age > 14, kids and women. People consume the wealth they have and when they have wealth less than a defined value, they go to work and gain money. When people get robbed, they lose money and writes the criminal who robbed them in their memory. The next time when they are near that criminal, they flees from the spot, or they move to a proper guardian and thus saving them from robbery.
Police agents and patrolling strategies
Police agents are not using any learning methods. They move randomly in the environment. But the proposed model added several patrolling strategies to them. If there is any civilian who has not robbed yet near to them, police move to them so that they remain protected. If the robbery rate in a particular area increases, police considers it as a hotspot of crime and patrols that area