Nuño, Juan CarlosHerrero, Miguel A.Primicerio, Mario2023-06-202023-06-202011-021937-163210.3934/dcdss.2011.4.193https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/43942Criminals are common to all societies. To fight against them the community takes different security measures as, for example, to bring about a police. Thus, crime causes a depletion of the common wealth not only by criminal acts but also because the cost of hiring a police force. In this paper, we present a mathematical model of a criminal-prone self-protected society that is divided into socio-economical classes. We study the effect of a non-null crime rate on a free-of-criminals society which is taken as a reference system. As a consequence, we define a criminal-prone society as one whose free-ofcriminals steady state is unstable under small perturbations of a certain socioeconomical context. Finally, we compare two alternative strategies to control crime: (i) enhancing police efficiency, either by enlarging its size or by updating its technology, against (ii) either reducing criminal appealing or promoting social classes at riskengjournal articlehttp://www.aimsciences.org/journals/displayArticles.jsp?paperID=5534http://www.aimsciences.orghttp://oa.upm.es/11927/restricted access517.9519.87Criminalitypopulation dynamicsnonlinear dynamical systemsocial mobilityEcuaciones diferencialesInvestigación operativa (Matemáticas)1202.07 Ecuaciones en Diferencias1207 Investigación Operativa