Mainstreaming Methodology for Estimating Costs of Crime
Estimating the costs of crime makes heavy demands on data. Ideally data should refer to the country for which estimates are being made. But this is not always possible. Large-scale victim surveys may not be conducted in the country, for example, in which case it might be impossible to get reliable estimates of the profile of types of injury suffered by victims of violent crime. In such cases it can be helpful to transfer estimates from other countries, making adjustments for obvious differences in elements such as per capita income or the costs of health treatment.
Differences in the definition and classification of offence types are the main source of variation across countries. Some international publications go to substantial lengths to compile data on a harmonised basis. This is essential for making international comparisons. But for purposes of estimating the costs of crime there are often advantages in using non-harmonised data, particularly if the estimates are to be used by criminal justice policy makers domestically. Domestic definitions will be used in other data sets and it is not usually feasible, or particularly helpful, to rebase all the series.
We list below some of the standard sources you are likely to find helpful. But we recommend that before you start using data for estimation purposes you conduct a data audit to establish what is available for your country and what is not. This will help clarify how far you are likely to get and how much you will need to invest in adapting estimates from other countries or in commissioning new data collection efforts. Link to Data Audit.
Key data sources typically include:
