NCJ Number
84550
Date Published
Unknown
Length
19 pages
Annotation
Using data from Brooklyn, N.Y., for the mid-1970's, various calculations of the suffering caused by burglary and homicide for both victims and perpetrators are presented.
Abstract
There is widespread if not universal feeling that those who have brought misery to others should suffer themselves and that there should be some monotonic relationship between the harshness of crimes and their punishments. In the absence of any clear theory on the 'just' punishment of offenders, an empirical investigation can be useful. A measure of victim suffering in burglaries is the amount of time victims will have to work to recoup their losses, given their annual income. The suffering of convicted burglars is the amount of time spent in prison. In 1977 there was one burglary in Brooklyn per 22 households. At an average of 2.2 hours per resident, the 2.4 million victims would have to work 600 years to earn the amount taken from them by burglars. In recent years, fewer than 10 percent of the residential burglaries in Brooklyn have been cleared by arrest, and fewer than 10 percent of the arrests have resulted in convictions. In 1977, all burglars convicted collectively served 300 years in prison. While the typical burglarized household spent 140 hours recouping its losses, the average prison sentence was about 8,000 hours. In the case of homicides, the victims lost 16,000 years of life to average longevity for their races and sex, while the killers served 800 years. For each hour that a killer takes from his/her victim's life expectancy, 6 minutes is served in prison. The harsher sentences served by burglars in comparison to those served by killers raises a question about the quality of justice. Tabular data and five references are provided.