Workers and Resources is a complicated game, when you are new (or newish) it is very easy to struggle with basic things like getting public transport working.

There are video tutorials but not only do you have to invest 10 minutes or even as much as an hour, but they might never mention or just gloss over the specific thing you wanted to know. The simple series provides bite-sized chunks of information that you can skim through in a minute to get what you want to know.

The simple series often provides a single opinionated way to do things. not because it is the only way or even the best way, but just because it is easy to explain concisely.

You don't need to build a police station immediately, and the 'crime system' doesn't kick at full force from the beginning. This is why people don't get hit with a 'crime death spiral' until they have a 10k-15k population.

I recommend building a police station (as well as a courthouse and prison) by the time your population reaches 5k (possibly earlier).

As a rough estimate, a small police station can easily handle 5k people, and a large police station can easily handle 10k people. Depending on happiness, loyalty, productivity, etc., they can handle more.

You should only put half the maximum number of police cars in a police station (e.g. 4 for a large police station, 2 for a small police station).

The number of police cars is responsible for the number of cases, and if a police station has too many cases, it will never be able to solve them all. If crime is too high, low happiness will reduce the productivity of each police station, so they process cases even more slowly.

A police station on its own does nothing. You always need a courthouse and a prison, too.

Police stations catch criminals, courthouses sentence them, and prisons imprison them to reduce criminality. Without a courthouse and prison, everyone caught by the police station will go free.

You must build a police station for every town; police stations can only catch local criminals. However, courthouses and prisons can be built anywhere. You don't need to build a courthouse and prison for every town. And you shouldn't because you'll end up with too many.

You should dramatically reduce crime sentences from the default values, i.e., 0.7 years for minors, 2.1 for mediums, and 5.4 for serious. The purpose of sending someone to prison is to reduce their criminality level; they waste too much time in prison with the default settings.

You want a ratio of 1:1 or, at most, 1:2 wardens per prisoner. So, if you have 70 wardens, you should make sure that the prison has no more than 140 prisoners (out of a maximum of 210). The exact ratio depends on productivity and loyalty.

The fewer wardens there are, the more likely prisoners will escape, and the less their criminality level will be reduced daily.

Your prisons have "intended upbringing" settings. You want to maximise Soviet propaganda while keeping happiness and cultural enjoyment positive.

The two causes of a death spiral are (1) low happiness and (2) insufficient police stations, courthouses or prisons.

You need to solve low happiness separately, assuming it's caused not by crime, so there isn't much point in discussing it here.

You don't need that many courthouses, so usually, the problem is that your police stations can't solve all the crimes, or your prisons are overflowing.

Your police stations can't solve all the crimes because (a) you have too many police cars (should only be half the maximum), (b) there are not enough police stations, or (c) your police stations are understaffed.

Your prison(s) overcrowding can be solved by (a) increasing the number of prisons or (b) decreasing the courthouse sentences (assuming you are still using the default).

• Solve any non-crime related happiness issues, e.g. missing meat, electronics, water, loyalty < 35%
  
• Ensure that you only have half the maximum number of police cars in each station
  
• If a police station has more than 10 cases, remove all the cases.
  
• Reduce courthouses sentences to numbers mentioned previously
  
• Ensure that your courthouse(s) are not overloaded with cases
  
• Ensure your buildings are sufficiently staffed. Police stations require both educated and highly educated workers
  
• Ensure you have at minimum two wardens per prisoner in all your prisons, possibly one warden per prisoner until you have resolved the low happiness/high crime rate

An average criminal rating of more than 3% is bad, and an average criminal rating of more than 20% is disastrous.

If you hit 20%, you should consider simply letting them all die and inviting new immigrants to your city. Or just abandon your republic entirely.

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