Agent-Based Simulation of Policy Funding Tradeoffs Through the Lens of Legitimacy and Hardship

Jack Mitcham ()

Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 2023, vol. 26, issue 3, 12

Abstract: There are mixed results in the literature when examining the impact of police spending and social welfare spending on crime rates. Here, we use an agent-based model to explore the potential impacts of the tradeoff between police spending and social welfare spending on crime by including parameters for heterogeneous hardship and views of police legitimacy in the model. The purpose of the model is to attempt to explain those mixed results and to provide guidance for policymakers who are implementing these funding decisions. We find that by including the hardship of the people and their view of police legitimacy in the model, the impact of increasing police spending has diminishing returns on the crime rate and under certain circumstances can lead to an increase in crime. This is a stepping stone for future models which can model systems in even more detail. Additionally, policymakers may want to incorporate hardship and police legitimacy into their decision analysis when evaluating programs and budgets.

Keywords: Agent-Based Model; Crime; Criminology; Global Sensitivity Analysis; Public Policy; Policy Modelling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-06-30
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jas:jasssj:2022-53-3

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