Crime

[lukamotel]

Criminality is an early game issue for me, and my only real problem. How do you PREVENT crime?

[Urist McDood]

You can't prevent crime outright but you can automate the criminal processing. When you get metalworking up you can build a police station. The rat assigned to the station cannot commit crimes and will run around (with boosted move speed from the building) to arrest criminals and take them back to the cell. The time it takes for the criminal to reform is magnitudes faster than just arresting them yourself and sticking them in cages. Getting 4 copper is doable early game as it's processing 2 copper ores (1:2 ratio) to build the station.

Crime seems to be tied to the living standard of the ratizen. By the end game, crime isn't much of an issue and it's a handful of repeat offenders that get sent to the slammer every so often.

Also it should be noted that criminals have a hollow heart that fills black close to their name to mark them. As this heart gets fuller, they start committing more extreme crime. Halfway full, they have a high chance of just firebombing buildings for... reasons.

[EdhyRa]

I think crime mechanic still in early stage of development. If you see in history (top right book) you'll see "Newest: " description are still empty rn.

[Senka]

Originally posted by lukamotel:

Criminality is an early game issue for me, and my only real problem. How do you PREVENT crime?

There is also the prison building early in the royalty tab of the research tree. You can manually catch criminals, by mousing over them and holding down mouse button while near them, and place them in the prison building. After a tiny bit of in game time they lose their criminal status and return to normal functioning rat-peeps.