Basic Principles
The approach to estimating the costs of crime taken on this web site is informed by micro-economic analysis. The welfare foundations of the economic approach to crime are reviewed here.
For purposes of the current section there are some key conceptual issues that arise in identifying and measuring the costs of crime. It is important to be aware of the distinctions between:
- ‘external’ and ‘social’ costs
- aggregate costs of crime and the costs of particular incidents
- spending (financial outlays) and opportunity cost
- incidence-based costs and prevalence-based costs
- the treatment of costs incurred in the present and costs expected in the future
For a summary of the differences see Basic Principles for Costing Crime
Other issues of great importance are:
- an appreciation of the limitations of the estimates presented in this section and of the methodology more generally and
- an appreciation of the scope for (and dangers of) taking estimates from one policy field or country and using them as the basis for cost estimation in a different setting.
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