Crime prevention is a necessary element to look into in your city. There are only a handful of ways to reduce crime in Cities Skylines 2, but it requires thinking and a planned approach. Sometimes, using only the police is not enough, and it could lead to rather unsavory moments in your city. You can follow our guide to maintain a low crime rate in your city.
Use Police Effectively in Cities Skylines 2
The most basic way of crime control is to use the Police as much as possible. As soon as your city reaches Milestone Three, you’ll unlock Police and Administration services. You will obtain Police Stations for free, which you can place in your city.
The Police Stations must be placed along highway-highway roads. Each Police station has a radius they will be covering, so you need to ensure that placement is widespread. The Police Stations will send out Patrol Cars consistently to keep crime in check in the covering region.
If there are any missed regions that police Stations do not cover, the crime rates can likely get worse there. Players also need to make sure that there is proper traffic management, or the Police Response time gets worse.
While getting stuck on the road can be a problem, there is a small alternative long-term solution. You can purchase the Police Headquarters. The Police HQ not only has a larger radius of coverage but also has more prison cells and even more Police cars for patrolling.
Helicopters can be used to Patrol your city instead of Police cars. This will help a lot in reducing crime in Cities Skylines 2. Unfortunately, the Police Headquarters costs more than a station, especially in upkeep, so you may still need to rely on some Police Stations.
Punish the Criminals
Simply having a lot of police stations or headquarters is not sufficient enough to reduce crime itself. Cells in Police Stations or HQs work more like detention centers rather than punishment. Once convicted, the Criminals need to be thrown in established buildings as a punishment.
Punishing criminals would reduce the crime rate by discouraging citizens and showing them the consequences of their actions. After unlocking the Police Headquarters for two development points – you can unlock the Prisons for four development points.
Prisons would, instead of sending cop cars for patrol, send Prisoner Transportation buses. These would go around the city and collect all the convicts and bring them to the Prison system. This way, the severity of the punishment has increased for all the criminals living in your city, which will discourage more citizens from committing more crimes.
This would also cover up for all the convicts that escaped the police station after the trial, as there was no way to punish them.
Reduce crime through Welfare
There is always a motive behind a crime. A bad economy and more rent issues may lead to a higher crime rate in Cities Skylines 2. This is not limited to you as the mayor of your city but also to the civilians residing there.
It is possible that your city is doing well financially and has perfect rental policies; however, a few citizens are struggling to get by in your town. This could lead to crimes as well, and therefore, establishing Welfare is important to reduce crimes further.
This is where the Welfare Offices and City Halls come into play. They are high-upkeep buildings that are cheaper to build, and their entire function is to grant happiness to the citizens and improve the welfare issues in the region.
Welfare Offices are cheaper than Police Stations and have a higher coverage radius. Welfare offices do not have any upgrades either. But they reduce crime in Cities Skylines 2 by providing happiness to the surrounding houses.
City Halls are a little more advanced than welfare offices and can prevent more crime by 5% by reducing loan rates and utility import costs. While the reduction amount is small, its impact is more significant to prevent crime.
Due to welfare structures, people can focus on their finances efficiently, and that would prevent crimes from occurring without even using police stations here.
One more thing to note is if you are encountering a high crime even though you have several police stations and no criminals, then you are facing a bug. There is no real way to fix this. You can only report it to Paradox and wait for them to fix it.
