Presidential candidate Bill Clinton famously made his campaign strategy centered on the nation’s economy with his pithy motto “It’s the economy, stupid”. Clinton also made crime a campaign theme. These two issues are not unrelated.
During the height of the disastrous defund the police movement, the idea that money diverted from law enforcement could be better used elsewhere was not only bad policy, but it is also bad math. Reformers also claim that America’s obsession with mass incarceration is too expensive and wasteful.
No one objects to a rational evaluation of how tax dollars are best used, but attaching monetary value to crimes that don’t happen is seldom part of the reformers’ calculations. For example, we can complain about the cost of prisons, but what does it cost society to have an offender loose and continuing to offend? We can cut police staff, but if crime increases, have we saved money on the balance sheet just to lose it elsewhere?
Part of the challenge in calculating the value of our criminal justice system is attaching dollars to intangibles. What financial value diminishes when a crime victim suffers an insurable loss and rates rise? What is the value of chronic pain or anxiety to a victim of violent crime? What loss of productivity occurs when a victim of identity theft has to spend hours on the phone or in court or worrying about their loss and re-establishing their finances?
What is lost in a community when a business opportunity that could create employment and increase taxable property value decides that the crime risk is too high or that public safety resources are too limited and invests elsewhere? Or when a business flees a crime-ridden neighborhood as many have?
Intangibles are often calculated by those wanting to inflate the cost of prisons. There is statistical merit in examining those costs, but making assumptions that families will be added to the welfare rolls when a family member is incarcerated, or that prison keeps a chronic offender from being in the workforce to be a tax-paying citizen is conjecture. (Based on studies that show that a professional criminal’s annual earning averages $60,000, denying legitimate employment by imprisonment doesn’t apply to the chronic, professional offender).
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, intangible costs include physical, psychological, and long-term financial harm incurred by crime victims and their families, lost productivity and wages, lower quality of life as a result of victimization, heightened fear of crime, reduced ability to stem blight, loss of commercial and other investment, and increased burden on social service organizations in local communities.
With due regard the plight of incarcerated persons, their civil liberties, the disadvantage of poverty and fatherlessness, and potential injustice due to prejudice, the reality is that most people in prison have perpetrated multiple offenses prior to the one for which they are serving a current sentence. Many times, the conviction or guilty plea is for a lesser offense than could have been charged. Most offenders have had opportunities for alternative dispositions of their cases like probation, counseling, rehab, or other non-jail options before finally coming to the end of the system’s compassion and being sent to prison.
A report published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) says “The majority of violent crimes are perpetrated by a small number of persistent violent offenders, typically males, characterized by early onset of violent criminality, substance abuse, personality disorders, and nonviolent criminality”. One survey shows that 63% of all convictions come from 1% of the population, so the number of persons in prison may be a good representation of the most dangerous among us and their incarceration means we are safer. What dollar can we attach to that?
Crime generates great loss to individuals and communities, beyond the cost of cops and prisons. The numbers from a 2008 NIH-published study are stark. A murder costs almost nine million dollars (think lifetime earnings loss, criminal justice costs, victim medical care, family impact, etc); rape $240,000; assault $107,000; robbery $42,000. Property crime costs are above and beyond the value of the items taken or destroyed. Each home burglary impacts society to the tune of $6,400 and thefts of various kinds including fraud and embezzlement over $20,000, with arson at $21,000. Keep in mind these are crimes that are discovered and reported.
A Rand company study showed that citizens know that investment in crime prevention has value. They are willing to pay more in taxes to reduce crime. This was especially true of the wealthy, but also of black respondents and young respondents to the survey cited. The study estimates “$8.5 million to $11 million in social benefit per averted murder, $185,000– $313,000 per averted sexual assault, $57,000–$86,000 per averted serious assault, and $21,000–$30,000 per averted burglary in year-2000 dollars.” Major attention should be given to this study’s finding about funding law enforcement for preventing crime: “Although effect estimates vary from study to study, the general message is that, once the identification problem is adequately addressed, increases in police staffing levels do generate measurable decreases in crime.” This applies to an actual increase in the total number of police officers, not mere reassignments of existing personnel.
Public safety spending should not be seen as a cost but as an investment.