NCJ Number
223636
Date Published
2008
Length
74 pages
Annotation
This report provides an update to a 2003 report by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) in estimating costs of crime for the calendar year 2005.
Abstract
The estimated costs of crime for 2005 were $35.8 billion, compared with the original report’s estimate of crime costs as $32 billion for 2001. The largest components of the estimate for 2005 were the costs of the criminal justice systems: police, courts, corrections, and other government agencies related to criminal justice. The highest offense-related costs were linked to fraud. The method used to calculate crime costs estimates for 2005 were, for the most part, the same as that used for the 2003 report. A description the methodology includes a discussion of the use of “multipliers” for various crimes. This is an estimate of how much police-recorded crime should be inflated to estimate the “true” number of crimes. Also discussed are “intangible” costs, which are those costs not usually “exchanged private or public markets, such as fear, pain, suffering, and lost quality of life” (Cohen 2005). Purchasing-power parities and inflation figures are also discussed, as well as some costs that have not been included in the estimates. The report presents studies used to assist in estimating costs of crime, as well as findings on cost estimates related to 15 offenses. 2 figures, 29 tables, and 46 references