The Cost of Crime

Estimates of cost of crime have gradually been introduced into the public debate on crime policy. Estimates differ in their scope and methodologies and this impedes international comparisons. This article follows the model of estimating costs of crime developed under the 6th Framework Programme and provides the comparable results of costs of crime in Poland. The total costs of crime have been estimated at 5.1% of GDP. In particular, the victimisation costs of violent crimes have been estimated at 1.94% of GDP and the costs of property crimes against individuals at 0.5% of GDP. The results are in line with estimates for other countries and provide the relevant measure for any cost-benefit analysis of a crime policy.

Previous studies of the cost of crime have focused on the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by victims. This approach significantly underestimates the cost of crime to victims by ignoring the pain, suffering, and fear caused by crime. Other studies have attempted to infer the cost of crime by estimating property value differences in high versus low crime areas. However, this approach does not permit one to determine the cost of individual crimes. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the cost of individual crimes by examining the pain, suffering, and fear endured by crime victims. Actual victim injury rates are combined with jury awards in personal injury accident cases to estimate monetary values for pain, suffering, and fear. I combine crime-related death rates with estimates of the value of life to arrive at monetary values for the risk of death. My estimate of the aggregate annual cost of crime to victims of FBI index crimes is $92.6 billion. These estimates are shown to have several direct policy applications.

Hedonic pricing models have been used to infer the cost of crime by estimating property value differences in high versus low crime areas. However, previous studies have been unable to disentangle the cost of individual crimes. This note reports on an attempt to estimate the cost of individual crimes by examining the pain, suffering and fear endured by crime victims. Actual victim injury rates are combined with jury awards in personal injury accident cases to estimate pain, suffering and fear. Crime-related death rates are combined with estimates of the value of life to arrive at monetary values for the risk of death. Not only does this approach yield crime-specific cost estimates, but these estimates are quite consistent with the property value methods of valuing aggregate crime.

The use of benefit-cost analyses by criminal justice researchers has slowly been increasing over the past 30 years. While still in its infancy, benefit-cost analyses of criminal justice policies have recently moved from the academic arena to actual use by policy makers. The growing use of benefit-cost analysis in crime policy tends to be lauded by economists; however, criminologists and legal scholars are less than unanimous in their views. A recent issue of Criminology and Public Policy on the “Role of the Cost-of-Crime Literature,” highlights this controversy. Two main themes can be distilled from critiques of the literature: first, the considerable uncertainty that exists in cost and benefit estimates; and second, the fact that important social costs are not being taken into account in current models. A related critique is that current methodologies to estimate the cost of crime are affected by income; bringing with it a concern that criminal justice policies based on a benefit-cost analysis will favor the rich. This research note addresses these broad questions about the role of benefit-cost analysis in the criminal justice policy arena and attempts to clear up some misunderstandings on the methodologies used to estimate the cost of crime. I also highlight some of the most important gaps in the literature for those interested in helping to improve the state-of-the-art in estimating the “cost of crime.” Perhaps equally important, I hope to demystify benefit-cost analysis and unmask it for what it really is – an important tool that can help policy makers systematically and transparently assess and compare options with the goal of making better policy decisions.

Organizational crime is a form of criminality that is possible only in connection with an organization. It is a form of criminality which is bound up with the operation of the structures of society. A typical example of organizational crime is environmental crime; in this the actor may well be an industrial company. This chapter presents only a few brief examples showing the extent and nature of the harms caused by organizational crime. A comparison of individual or traditional crime with organizational crime reveals some important differences in respect to the advantages, profits and costs of the crimes: financial harm, social costs of organizational crime, and physical harm. There are some difficult obstacles in developing more effective controls over organizational crime. The obstacles can be classified as follows: ideological obstacles, legal obstacles, and structural obstacles.

This dissertation focuses on the costs of air pollution and crime. In the first chapter, I address a gap in the literature concerning air pollution’s impacts on human capital formation. I investigate the impact of ambient fine particulate matter on children’s learning using policy-induced variation in air pollution. The North Carolina Clean Smokestacks Act of 2002 mandated emissions reductions from coal-fired power plants. This resulted in utility providers installing pollution mitigating technology on a fraction of the coal-fired power plants in the state. This policy reduced exposure to particulate matter throughout the state but had larger impacts for schools closest to power plants. Using this quasi-experimental variation and an Instrument Variable approach, I find that reduction in air pollution significantly increased academic gains for students in grades four through eight. A one microgram per cubic meter drop in particulate matter results in improvements of 4.8% and 4.0% of a standard deviation in math and reading respectively. The results indicate that air quality can significantly impact human capital. In the second chapter, I challenge past claims that avoidance behavior associated with crime imposes large costs on society. The previous literature, based on survey evidence, showed that individuals avoid public transportation due to crime. This can lead to welfare losses for public transportation riders and lost revenue for the transit authority. Using a Difference-in-Difference style identification strategy, I investigate the impact of violent crime at Chicago Transit Authority metro train stations on train ridership. Results indicate that crime does not impact ridership in the short-term, even in the most sensitive of groups such as students, seniors, and weekend riders. This evidence implies that the cost of avoidance behavior may not be as large as previously suspected. Future cost of crime estimates may not need to be adjusted for avoidance behavior costs.

Programs that prevent crime cost money. In order to efficiently allocate these limited funds, we need to know how much people benefit from crime prevention. While there are some comprehensive estimates of the cost of (or benefits of avoiding) crime to victims and to society at large, we have very limited crime-specific information on the legal system resources that would be freed up for other purposes across states. Using a Monte Carlo simulation approach to take into account uncertainty in the data, this study finds the national average costs to taxpayers for judicial/legal services per reported crime are likely around the following (in 2010 dollars): $22,000–$44,000 (homicide), $2000–$5000 (rape and sexual assault), $600–$1300 (robbery), $800–$2100 (aggravated assault), $200–$600 (burglary), $300–$600 (larceny/theft), and $200–$400 (motor vehicle theft). At a state-level, the costs of crime are 50 % to 70 % more or less than these national averages depending on the crime type and state. These estimates can be used to understand the level of resources spent per crime and the potential legal resources freed up for a change in reported crime rates; they are not a measure of waste or efficiency, but it is hoped this study contributes to this debate.

Treatment for opioid use disorders (OUD) reduces the risk of mortality and infectious disease transmission; however, opportunities to quantify the potential economic benefits of associated decreases in drug-related crime are scarce. This paper aimed to estimate the costs of crime during and after periods of engagement in publicly funded treatment for OUD to compare total costs of crime during a hypothetical 6-month period following initiation of opioid agonist treatment (OAT) versus detoxification. Retrospective, administrative data-based cohort study with comprehensive information on drug treatment and criminal justice systems interactions. Publicly funded drug treatment facilities in California, USA (2006-10). A total of 31 659 individuals admitted for the first time to treatment for OUD, and who were linked with criminal justice and mortality data, were followed during a median 2.3years. Median age at first treatment admission was 32, 35.8% were women and 37.1% primarily used prescription opioids. Daily costs of crime (US$2014) were calculated from a societal perspective and were composed of the costs of policing, court, corrections and criminal victimization. We estimated the average marginal effect of treatment engagement in OAT or detoxification adjusting for potential fixed and time-varying confounders, including drug use and criminal justice system involvement prior to treatment initiation. Daily costs of crime during treatment compared with after treatment were $126 lower for OAT [95% confidence interval (CI)=$116, $136] and $144 lower for detoxification (95% CI=$135, $154). Summing the costs of crime during and after treatment over a hypothetical 6-month period using the observed median durations of OAT (161days) and detoxification (19days), we estimated that enrolling an individual in OAT as opposed to detoxification would save $17 550 ($16 840, $18 383). In publicly funded drug treatment facilities in California, USA, engagement in treatment for opioid use disorders is associated with lower costs of crime in the 6months following initiation of treatment, and the economic benefits were far greater for individuals receiving time-unlimited treatment.

In The Costs of Crime and Justice, Mark Cohen presents a comprehensive view of the financial setbacks of criminal behaviour. Victims of crime might incur medical costs, lost wages and property damage; while for some crimes pain, suffering and reduced quality of life suffered by victims far exceeds any physical damage. The government also incurs costs as the provider of mental health services, police, courts and prisons.Cohen argues that understanding the costs of crime can lead to important insights and policy conclusions - both in terms of criminal justice policy but also in terms of other social ills that compete with crime for government funding. This book systematically discusses the numerous methodological approaches and tallies up what is known about the costs of crimeA must-read for anyone involved in public policy, The Costs of Crime and Justice consolidates the diverse research in this area but also makes one of the most valuable contributions to date to the study of the economics of criminal behavior.

As governments with limited fiscal resources seek to invest in the “best” programs to prevent crime, they often first try to identify the true costs of crime to guide these decisions. Contingent valuation (CV) is a common survey method used to elicit how much the public is willing to pay (WTP) to reduce a particular crime. We utilize one of the first datasets in criminal justice that includes open-ended WTP data gathered from a survey using factorial design and random assignment. WTP figures are then input into a formula which also takes into account 1) the number of households and 2) the number of crimes “avoided,” which is calculated based upon the percentage crime reduction presented to survey respondents. Drawing upon data from a representative sample of the United States, we assess how sensitive respondents are to crime type, crime reduction percentages, program types, and framing. Results demonstrate that in general, open-ended WTP surveys elicit highly skewed responses and that respondents are more willing to pay for crime reduction programs with a higher number of individual components. However, respondents are not sensitive to crime reductions or several other survey framing techniques. Importantly, due to these highly skewed WTP values and lack of responsivity to crime control percentages, final cost of crime numbers vary widely – potentially altering policy decisions driven by these methods. We conclude with a discussion of the appropriateness of these methods for accurately estimating the costs of crime.

In the past few years there has been a considerable shift in the proportion of resources devoted to more operational or manage ment-oriented approaches to criminological research and devel opment. To a large extent this shift, with a few notable exceptions, has been accomplished by the influx of researchers or practitioners from outside the ranks of traditional criminological researchers. Unfortunately, there seems to have been a lack of real under standing of both new and existing methods and approaches and, therefore, a reduction in the degree of acceptance and cooperation between the two groups. By presenting an "economic" approach to a subject of past and present interest and relevance, namely "The Cost of Crime," this paper attempts to begin to alleviate this problem of communi cation as well as to summarize the work done in this area to date. The paper first deals with problem definitions within an economic framework and then proceeds to develop economic guidelines relevant for a policy-maker in the Criminal Justice System. In so doing, it also lays a theoretical structure for evalu ating existing or conducting future research into the cost of crime.

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the cost of crime as understood in Ukrainian and foreign criminology, investigating both the direct and indirect damage caused by crime, its social consequences and Ukrainians’ attitudes toward its costs. Design/methodology/approach From January 2018 to May 2019, data were gathered using an online questionnaire from 717 respondents between 14 and 65 years of age residing in all regions of Ukraine. Findings Results suggest a high level of concern among Ukrainian citizens regarding security and crime. Latent criminality, crime rates and mistrust of law enforcement are high in Ukraine. It was found that the total cost of crime to the respondents (losses from crimes) reached UAH2m, and 69.3 per cent reported fear of becoming a victim of crime, with 26.2 per cent indicating that they had already been victims. Practical implications The knowledge of the cost of crime obtained in this study is vital for understanding crime in Ukraine. The results could be effectively leveraged to develop effective and cost-efficient means of combating crime. They could also be used to forecast crime rates, and thus, optimize future responses to the challenges of crime. Originality/value This is the first comprehensive study of the cost of crime in Ukraine and it indicates both the tangible and intangible costs of the damage it inflicts. Notwithstanding the country-specific case-study context, the results could inform discussions and decisions at a broader international scale, subject to the usual caveats.

A growing literature attempts to estimate the victim costs of crime. Three approaches to modelling the cost of crime are examined in this chapter: surveys of victims, extrapolation from jury awards, and the impact of crime on property values. The first two methods attempt to measure the victim costs associated with specific crimes while the third is based on the willingness to pay for a reduced probability of victimisation. Section I summarises these three approaches to the cost of crime. Economics is oriented towards marginal analysis, which leads economists to model the cost of crime in terms of a revealed preference for small improvements in public safety. In Section II we present an empirical model of the willingness to pay for increased public safety which incorporates estimates of the victim costs of crime rather than a simple enumeration of the number of reported offences. Concluding comments follow in Section III.KeywordsHousing MarketViolent CrimeBlock GroupContingent ValuationNeighbourhood CharacteristicThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The aim of this volume is to carry out a systematic and rigorous analysis of the costs of crime and violence in Latin America and the Caribbean, with a focus on methodological and conceptual issues that are key to an exhaustive understanding of their economic and social dimensions. It presents an economic model of crime that conceptualizes the impact of violence on welfare. In addition, this volume is the first of its kind to provide estimates of the direct costs of crime and violence with the accounting method in a homogenous manner for a set of countries in the region (Chile, Costa Rica, Honduras, Paraguay, and Uruguay). Furthermore, it presents applied analyses on the indirect and intangible economic and social costs of crime and violence, and discusses the need to improve statistical systems in the region for conducting evidence-based citizen security analyses and obtaining estimates of the welfare costs of crime.

Costs and benefits of treatment for cocaine addiction in DATOS