Mainstreaming Methodology for Estimating Costs of Crime
Crime prevention work is done by non-government agencies as well as by government. Voluntary activities such as neighbourhood watch schemes, residents’ associations or neighbourhood patrols make use of volunteer time that has an opportunity cost. Of course it is in the nature of voluntary organisations that they tend not to record these costs, but that does not make them any less real.
Other voluntary groups and charities run education and activity programmes for children and young people which, at least in part, have crime prevention objectives. In principle the costs associated with the crime prevention components of these activities should be included when measuring the costs of crime. See the review of Non-government Crime Prevention Programmes.
In practice the difficulty of identifying the voluntary and charitable sector organisations involved in provision of crime prevention services and also the costs they incur in such provision is such that these costs are normally excluded from cost estimation. For example they are omitted from the Home Office model. Non-government Crime Prevention Programmes.
