The Economic and Social Costs of Crime

This topic is an important part of the Victimology topic, which students of A-level sociology will study as part of the Crime and Deviance option in their second year of study.

The Economic and Social Costs of Crime in England and Wales

The Home Office produces an annual report on the Economic and Social Impacts of Crime, summarising the impacts of crime in England and Wales. The latest report was published in 2018, reflecting on the cost of crime in 2015-16.

The report notes the following costs:

• The overall cost to individuals for 2015-16 was £50 billion.
• The overall cost to businesses was £9 billion
• Violent crime accounts for 75% of the total costs of crime to individuals, but only one third of crimes are violent crimes.
• Homicide (murder) is the crime with the greatest overall cost, at just over £ 3 million per incident
• Rape (to put it bluntly, but this is the words of the Home Office, has the highest ‘unit cost’ for non-fatal crimes – at just under £40 000 per incident.

TBH this is one of more bizarre tables I’ve seen…

How the Cost of Crime is Calculated

The Home Office includes all of the following when working out costs:

• Value of property lost or damaged
• Physical and emotional damage to the individual
• Lost output as a result of being a victim
• Health costs
• Policing and Criminal Justice costs (which will include prison)
• Costs of preventing crime (such as security measures).

So if we take into account all of the above, we can see why murder has such as high unit cost – all that lost output from the victim and the cost of keeping the murderer in jail for over a decade (most murders are caught).

Limitations with this data

There are limitations with measuring some of the costs of security – the Home Office uses the revenue of cyber security companies to calculate this for example, but I guess it doesn’t take into account specialists companies have to take on to install and maintain cyber security operations.

It might take into account emotional costs – but what about the costs of ‘fear of crime’ – which the media makes sure doesn’t correspond to the actual risks of crime, which could be creating more anxiety disorders which in turn is linked to a reduction in economic output?

Finally, some of this sounds a bit harsh, such as putting a financial figure on the cost of being a victim of rape, it somehow doesn’t quite get to the ‘real’ cost, maybe?!?