Mainstreaming Methodology for Estimating Costs of Crime
Many individuals who have offended once go on to commit further offences, whether or not they have been caught and convicted. Cost of crime methodology can be applied to make estimates of the values of sequences of offences (or convictions). These estimates can in turn be used to estimate the value of preventing or reducing offending at different points in the life-cycle. For a brief review of the literature, see Costs of criminal careers.
As well as application to ‘whole careers of crime’ estimates of the costs of offences can be used to derive indicative costs of segments of criminal careers. This is an area where the work of criminologists on criminal careers, based on longitudinal study of offender cohorts, can be utilised by economists and policy analysts interested in comparing the costs and benefits of interventions to prevent repeat offending.
The basic approach is to bring together estimates of the number and type of offences expected and estimates of the costs of the various offence types. The product of these two is the expected cost of offending. This can be used as a measure of the return from interventions that are effective in diverting individuals away from such career paths.
