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Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control (1994)

Chapter: The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States

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Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States

Mark A. Cohen, Ted R. Miller and Shelli B. Rossman

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to set forth a comprehensive theoretical framework in which to evaluate the consequences and costs of violent behavior, and second, to review and update existing estimates of the cost of victimization. At first glance, it might seem that enumerating the consequences of violent behavior is a straightforward task. Take the highly publicized murder of Carol Stuart (whose husband, Chuck, was later found to have been the murderer) and her unborn child in Boston.1 The direct consequences are obvious—two deaths and enumerable medical costs associated with the interim treatment of both victims. However, many indirect consequences of this murder are not so obvious.

Carol Stuart's family and friends suffered a loss. More than 800 mourners attended her funeral. Aside from the time spent away from work or other activities, some of the mourners no doubt suffered at least transitory psychological injury. It is possible that a close relative suffered post-traumatic stress disorder,

Mark Cohen is at the Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, and Ted Miller is at the National Public Services Research Institute, and Shelli Rossman is at the Urban Institute.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

resulting in sleepless nights, withdrawal from social activities, psychological counseling, or even long-term therapy.

Chuck Stuart collected several hundred thousand dollars in life insurance. The insurance companies incurred administrative expenses associated with paying out this money and ultimately attempting to retrieve it after the full story became known.

A massive police investigation followed the murder after Chuck Stuart reported that a black gunman in a jogging suit had attacked their car at a busy intersection. Aside from the cost of employing police officers and other related expenses, it was reported that as many as 150 black men were stopped and frisked every day. Each of those men likely suffered from fear and deprivation of freedom. Other black men who were not stopped by police also suffered from fear under the threat that they too would be detained. Some commuters who normally drove through the area took longer detours or otherwise avoided the neighborhood because of the perceived increase in the risk of victimization. This may have hurt local businesses who otherwise benefited from sales to these commuters. Others who lived in or near the neighborhood might also have taken extra precautions such as staying home at night or buying security systems. Even more subtle and difficult to measure in this particular case is the increased racial tension precipitated by media coverage and apparently illegal police tactics of searching potential suspects.

The police ultimately arrested William Bennett, who was identified in a police lineup by Chuck Stuart. Although a formal indictment was never made (because Stuart's brother went to the police with information implicating Chuck Stuart as the murderer), William Bennett also was a victim of this case, as was his family. Had he been tried or falsely convicted of murder, he would have endured additional costs such as loss of freedom. Further, the government would have incurred the cost of incarceration itself. Had Chuck Stuart (who ultimately committed suicide) lived to be charged with the murders, there would have been additional criminal justice-related costs.

As difficult as it is, the task of enumerating the consequences of violent behavior is considerably easier than attempting to quantify (and monetize) the magnitude of these consequences. Although some costs (such as direct medical expenses) are relatively easy to estimate, others are virtually impossible (such as deprivation of freedom). In between these two extremes, there is a growing economics literature that attempts to place monetary values on pain, suffering, injuries, and death. This paper brings together

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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many disparate sources of information concerning the magnitude of the costs and the consequences of victimization; it also provides a few new and updated estimates.

The empirical side of this paper focuses on the long-term costs and consequences of all personal victimizations in the United States during 1987. Following the definition set forth by the Panel on the Understanding and Control of Violent Behavior, we include all "threatened, attempted or completed intentional infliction of physical harm by persons against persons." However, our primary focus is on the traditional violent crime categories of homicide, robbery, assault, and rape.

For some types of victimizations—notably abuse of children under age 12—and some types of consequences, insufficient data exist to assess the magnitude of either consequences or costs. In such instances, we identify these gaps, and suggest estimation approaches that might be considered in future research.

IMPORTANCE OF ESTIMATING COSTS

Estimating the cost of intentional injury is more than an academic exercise. This section discusses a few of the most important reasons for being concerned with the cost of intentional injury. It also illustrates some of the uses and pitfalls of using cost estimates for policy analysis.

Comparison of Aggregate Crime Costs to Other Social Ills

To the extent that we are successful in estimating the aggregate cost of intentional injury, we can compare this total to the cost associated with other social problems. At a minimum, this would allow one to place the problem of intentional injury in perspective vis-à-vis other social ills (e.g., drug abuse, homelessness). Over time, it might also be possible to compare trends in aggregate costs to determine if these problems are getting worse or better. Whether or not one agrees that this is a useful exercise, various advocacy groups do in fact compare "cost of crime" estimates to other costs in an effort to affect policy decisions (e.g., see Irwin and Austin, 1987:16). Because most of the cost estimates cited in the past have been significant underestimates, more accurate estimates would better inform the policy debate (Cohen, 1988a:538).

However, one cannot simply compare aggregate cost estimates of intentional injury with estimates of the cost of other social ills

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

to arrive at policy recommendations for future public priorities. Suppose, for example, it was estimated that the cost of intentional injury in the United States exceeded the cost imposed by automobile crashes (see, e.g., Streff et al., 1992). It does not necessarily follow that society should increase expenditures to prevent intentional injuries relative to public spending for preventing such crashes. If one includes the cost of "preventing" intentional injuries and motor vehicle crashes, it might be found (for example) that society is already spending too much on the former and not enough on the latter. Thus, we also need to know the deterrent and incapacitative effect of various sanctions, increased police patrols, etc. More importantly, one needs to know the marginal costs and benefits of various policy options designed to reduce crime (or highway crashes)—not just the aggregate costs of current social ills.

If one is really interested in estimating the aggregate cost of intentional injury, the hypothetical question should be posed, "What would life be like without violence?" Not only would there be no victims and no government expenditures on punishing offenders, but "society would be profoundly transformed. Most sorts of organized crime would be eliminated, since it depends on the threat of violence to do business. There would be no more baggage checks in airports. The commercial life of the inner city would be transformed . . . . "2 This paper does not address these aggregate social costs of intentional injury. Instead, its primary focus is on estimating the cost of individual incidents of intentional injury. This approach is most useful for purposes of conducting benefit-cost analyses of policy options (see below).

Comparison of Harm by Type of Victimization

Without estimates of cost, it is difficult to compare the harm associated with the "average" assault to that of the "average" rape. Although one can tally up the various harms associated with each type of incident (e.g., value of property stolen, frequency of injuries by type of injury, mental health-related injuries), it is difficult to compare these harms objectively without a common metric such as dollars.

Until recently, the only accepted approach to comparing harms has been to survey the public on the perceived seriousness of crime (see Wolfgang et al., 1985; Cullen et al., 1982; Rossi et al., 1974). This approach led to the development of a "crime seriousness index" (Sellin and Wolfgang, 1964).3 Although surveys are

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

useful as a means of understanding public opinion, they are based on public perceptions concerning the severity of crimes, which may include misperceptions about the frequency of injuries in typical criminal events (see Cohen, 1988b). Moreover, these studies are generally unable to distinguish between the generic harm associated with an injury and the actual consequences of any one victimization. The latter would be particularly important if one were interested in the extent to which the consequences of victimization vary across different segments of the population (e.g., age or sex).

Benefit-Cost Analysis of Policy Options

Society's ability to control criminal behavior is limited by its ability to pay for police, courts, and corrections. In an effort to reduce crime, the severity of its consequences, and the cost of preventing and controlling crime, society has undertaken many criminal justice experiments. Recent examples in corrections include intensive probation (National Institute of Justice, 1987), electronic monitoring of offenders (National Institute of Justice, 1989a), and shock incarceration programs (National Institute of Justice, 1989b). Other criminal justice policy experiments include preventive police patrols and misdemeanor spouse arrest programs for domestic violence (National Institute of Justice, 1988).

One of the advantages of using dollars as a common metric for analyzing criminal victimizations is that we can compare the benefits of reduced victimization to the costs of the proposed policy. If two options have identical crime control effects but differing costs, the choice is simple. Unfortunately, few policy alternatives are so easily compared. In a more realistic case where a new policy reduces crime at some additional expense (or increases crime at a savings), one of the key questions is whether the reduced (increased) crime level is worth its price. Only by monetizing the cost of criminal victimization can one begin to answer that question.

There have been a few attempts to conduct benefit-cost analyses of criminal justice programs. For example, Friedman (1977) concluded that the social benefits of the Supported Work experiment in New York exceeded its social cost. This conclusion was reached despite the fact that the "costs" of crimes averted by this program were largely underestimated due to the state of knowledge prevailing at the time. More recently, the deterrent and incapacitative effects of longer prison sentences were combined

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

with estimates of the monetary cost of crime and the cost of prison to estimate the benefits and costs of various policy options (Cohen, 1988a:549-552; Rhodes, 1988).

Without a full accounting of costs, it is easy to reach erroneous policy conclusions. For example, a study by Austin (1986) found a favorable benefit-cost ratio of an early release program. The savings to the government from releasing prisoners early was determined to exceed costs associated with the slightly higher crime rate caused by recidivists. However, the "cost" of crime in Austin's paper was based solely on direct out-of-pocket victim expenses. In the case of rape, that cost was assumed to be $357, compared to an average auto theft of $2,544 (Austin, 1986:494, Table 37). Cohen (1988a) reestimated the benefit-cost ratios using dollar estimates of the nonmonetary costs of crime (where rape was valued at $51,058) and reached the opposite policy conclusion.

We do not claim that policy decisions should be based solely on benefit-cost analyses, because it will never be possible to adequately monetize all costs and benefits. For example, certain policy options might be chosen primarily because they are "fair" or "just." Society clearly values justice, but we have no method of estimating this attribute. In such a case, the benefit-cost analysis can still help policy makers make informed decisions by understanding what it costs society to implement one particular program as opposed to another that might be less fair.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR ESTIMATING COSTS AND CONSEQUENCES

Violent behavior imposes many types of costs on society. In determining conceptually whether or not to include an element as a cost, the operational criteria used throughout this paper is whether or not society would be better off in its absence. In other words, we adopt the economist's notion of "social costs" as being any "resource-using activity which reduces aggregate well-being" (Gray, 1979:21). These resources need not be expressed in dollar terms; nor do we require that they be easily measurable.

The economics of crime literature has traditionally distinguished between three types of costs (Demmert, 1979:2-5): (1) those caused directly by violence (i.e., external costs imposed by the offender); (2) those costs society incurs in its attempt to deter or prevent future incidents (through deterrence, incapacitation, or rehabilitation of offenders as well as preventive measures taken by potential

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

victims); and (3) those costs incurred by the offender (such as the opportunity cost of the offender's time while either engaging in the offense or being punished).

To this traditional division of costs, we add (at least conceptually) a fourth—the cost of society's desire to punish socially unacceptable behavior. There is clearly some overlap between this cost and society's desire to deter or prevent future injuries. That is, sending a rapist to jail might simultaneously satisfy the goals of prevention and retribution. Conceptually, one could allocate prison costs (for example) by assuming that ''prevention" costs are those for which the social costs of imprisonment are less than the social benefits of imprisonment through reduced crime. Any expenditures beyond those justified by such a cost-benefit analysis would be allocated to "punishment."

Based on the empirical reality that offenders differ in their propensity to commit crimes, Waldfogel (1989) estimated both the marginal costs and the marginal benefits of incarceration. His findings supported the notion that, overall, incarceration "pays for itself" through deterrence or incapacitation. However, at the margin, the results are less clear. It is possible, therefore, that the cost of incarcerating the marginal offender exceeds the benefits of incarceration, which suggest that incarceration may serve a retributive role. Because data limitations make it difficult, if not impossible, to allocate costs between prevention and retribution, all costs of punishment included in this paper are treated as if they were designed for deterrent or preventive purposes.

MONETARY VERSUS NONMONETARY COSTS

We can distinguish between two types of costs: monetary and nonmonetary. Monetary costs generally consist of out-of-pocket expenditures, such as medical treatment, property damage and loss, and emergency police or ambulance response. They also consist of lost wages and productivity.

In addition to these monetary costs, injury victims and their families may endure pain, suffering, and reduced quality of life. Since pain, suffering, and quality of life are not normally exchanged in the marketplace, there is no direct method of observing their monetary value. Indeed, the term "cost" is more difficult to conceptualize for nonmonetary losses because one cannot simply "buy" or "sell" pain and suffering.

Suppose for a moment that there were markets for pain and suffering. If person A wants to inflict harm on person B, he must

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

negotiate a mutually acceptable price. For some injuries, person B will be willing to accept this injury in exchange for a high enough price. Alternatively, person B might be willing to pay person A not to inflict that harm. These two amounts will place bounds on the ultimate market price. That is, one can bound the value from above by examining the maximum amount a person is willing to pay to avoid an injury—the "ransom" value. The "price" can also be bound from below by using the minimum amount a person would be willing to accept to voluntarily endure the injury—the "compensation" value (see Cook and Graham, 1977).

The ransom value is generally referred to as "willingness to pay" (WTP) because it measures the amount people are willing to pay for avoidance of an injury. The compensation value is generally referred to as "willingness to accept" (WTA) because it examines the amount required to convince a person to accept an injury or death. For marketed goods, WTP and WTA are generally assumed to be equal; otherwise, one could always profit from arbitrage (Merkhofer, 1987:156).

Although WTP and WTA are closely linked, the essential difference between the two is the question of who pays—that is, who has the property rights to the commodity in question. For a commodity that consumers dislike (such as pollution or crime), WTP is likely to be lower than WTA for financial,4 and even psychological or ethical reasons.5 The difference is most striking when one considers the prospect of a certain death. In such a case, the WTP is bounded by one's own wealth, whereas few people would be willing to accept a certain death at any price.

Which valuation approach should be utilized depends on the policy question being addressed. For example, if one is interested in examining a proposal to reduce the risk of death to a population, a WTP approach might be warranted. However, if one is interested in making a person "whole" as a result of an incident that has already taken place, a WTA approach might be more appropriate.

Finally, it should be noted that many earlier cost of injury and cost of crime studies valued deaths solely on the basis of forgone productivity. This "human capital approach" to valuing life ignores the pain, suffering, and lost enjoyment of life. Instead, it counts the monetary costs of death. This method is appropriate if one is interested solely in the effect of deaths on economic activity, as measured by the gross national product, and on household production.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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Interdependency of Cost Categories

It is important to understand that the many different consequences and costs of victimization are interdependent. That is, increasing one type of cost might either increase or decrease another type of cost. Conceptually, victimization (and hence the cost of victimization) can be thought of as being the equilibrium outcome of a "crime market" (Cook, 1986:2). Potential offenders who "supply" crimes are sensitive to both "demand" and cost factors. The demand for crime is based on the vulnerability and exposure of potential victims, partially determined by precautions taken by potential victims. One of the key costs of supplying crime is the expected penalty—the likelihood and severity of punishment.

To illustrate, consider the following simplistic example. Suppose that the violent crime rate in one neighborhood increases. Potential victims will likely take more costly precautionary actions to reduce their exposure to this new increased risk. They might stay at home more often and buy more secure locks—thus raising the cost of prevention. The city might spend money on overtime for police patrols, which will raise the "expected cost" of committing a crime to potential offenders.

The net effect of reducing the demand for and increasing the cost of committing a crime might cause some potential criminals to take more costly actions to avoid capture (such as buying sophisticated equipment or hiring accomplices to watch for police). Alternatively, some potential criminals might decide it is not worth the added risk of failure or capture, and might commit fewer crimes. Thus, it is likely that the crime rate will be somewhat higher than before, but not as high as it would have been if the community had not taken these costly actions in response to the increased criminal activity.

Offsetting Benefits of Victimization

It is possible that intentional injuries will result in offsetting social benefits. For example, suppose a career criminal is robbed at gunpoint and fatally shot. The social cost of this murder might be partially offset by the reduced cost of other future crimes the victim was likely to commit. That is, there might be an "incapacitative" effect of intentional injury (see Cohen, 1983, for a review of the incapacitation literature). Of course, this assumes that no other potential offenders replace the victim's future criminal

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

career by increasing their own violation rate (see Reiss, 1980). Although this might be a reasonable theoretical approach to aggregating social costs of victimization, empirical evidence is too sparse to make any estimates in this paper.

Efficient Versus Inefficient Costs

For a variety of reasons, society often chooses methods of achieving its goals that are not cost minimizing. To the extent that these costs serve no other socially desirable goals, they may be considered wasted resources. For example, Schmidt and Witte (1984:Chap. 16) have estimated the optimal prison size based on actual cost data and found that substantial savings could accrue by building larger-scale prisons. Whether or not the added cost of inefficient prison sizes should be included in the cost of victimization is unclear. To some extent, it is not the offender's "fault" that society spends more than it has to for prisons. On the other hand, because higher than minimum costs are almost inherent in any bureaucracy, it may be reasonable to include such costs. Moreover, we may be paying for other attributes, such as a more humane treatment of prisoners. In this paper, we have included all known costs, regardless of whether there are less expensive ways to achieve the same goal.

Fixed, Average, and Marginal Costs

Although this paper attempts to enumerate and, where possible, monetize virtually all conceivable costs and consequences of violent behavior in the United States, the reader must be careful in using any estimates derived here. As mentioned above, there are many reasons why policy makers might be interested in monetary estimates of the cost of violent behavior. These different reasons often require the use of different estimates. If one is simply interested in the magnitude of the "crime" problem, all costs estimated here should be included. On the other hand, if one is interested in analyzing various criminal justice options, only marginal costs and benefits should be considered.

For example, suppose policy makers are considering an increase in the average prison sentence for armed robbers by one year. First, one would need to determine the marginal cost of imprisoning one armed robber for a year. The marginal cost of imprisonment does not include the fixed cost of building prisons (unless this new policy requires the use of expanded prison capacity).

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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This amount would be compared to the marginal benefit of one additional imprisonment year for an armed robber, which depends on the number of crimes averted (through incapacitation or deterrence), and the cost of each additional crime averted. The cost of each additional crime depends on both the cost to victims and the criminal justice processing costs for each offense.

In some instances, average costs are more readily available than marginal costs. For example, although we might estimate the aggregate cost for private security (and thus derive the average cost of security per crime), we have no evidence on the reduction in private security expenditures that might occur if we reduced the risk of armed robbery. Without such marginal estimates, it would be unrealistic to assume (for example) that a 10 percent reduction in crime rates would result in a 10 percent reduction in prevention expenditures. See Zimring and Hawkins (1988) and Zedlewski (1989) for a discussion of these issues.

Although this paper attempts to distinguish among average, fixed, and marginal costs, it should be acknowledged that this distinction is not always clear cut. For example, one might argue that the marginal cost of imprisonment is the cost of maintaining a prisoner (e.g., food, additional guards) plus the annualized cost of a prison bed. However, if new prisoners are double-celled in jails designed for one prisoner, one might argue that the marginal cost is only the cost of subsistence.

Real Versus Opportunity Costs

Some costs that appear to be fixed are actually marginal opportunity costs. For example, suppose the number of murders in a city is reduced by one. Suppose further that instead of reducing police costs due to less time investigating murders, the effect of this lowered murder rate is to shift police resources into other activities. From an opportunity cost standpoint, these police costs should be counted as part of the cost of a murder. Reducing the need for a police investigation might not reduce police expenditures, but it will certainly free up valuable police resources that will be used for another purpose.

Victim Assistance and Other Cost-Reducing Costs

Some of the costs associated with violent behavior may actually be designed to reduce the cost of victimization. For example, victim service agencies provide a variety of psychological treatment

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

programs for victims and assist victims in dealing with the judicial process. At first, it might seem inappropriate to include these as a "social" cost of victimization. After all, victim service agencies really provide a social benefit. However, in the absence of these victim service agencies, the costs of victimization would be even higher—because the pain and suffering endured by crime victims would increase. Thus, attributing the cost of victim service agencies to the cost of the victimization itself seems quite reasonable.

Time Frame for Cost Estimation

Although some injury-related costs are incurred immediately upon injury, others will appear at some future date. Two different methods are generally used to account for this time consideration—the "incidence" and "prevalence" approaches. An incidence-based estimate counts all costs that will result from injuries occurring in a given year, regardless of when the actual cost will be incurred. A prevalence-based estimate counts all costs in a given year, regardless of when the injury actually occurred.

Incidence-based estimates indicate how much could be saved by preventing future incidents; prevalence-based estimates provide insight into the cost savings attainable through improved treatment of existing injuries (Miller and Luchter, 1988). For injuries that are acute (i.e., less than one year's duration), incidence- and prevalence-based cost estimates are roughly identical. However, for serious unintentional injuries, prevalence-based estimates are substantially higher (Miller and Luchter, 1988).6

The costs presented here are incidence estimates. They include present and future costs associated with victim injuries that occurred in 1987. However, as explained later, data limitations are likely to cause us to underestimate future costs.

Because some costs occur immediately whereas others accrue in future years, economists achieve comparability among future and present cost flows by converting future costs to present values. Discounted future costs indicate how much would have to be invested today to pay the costs when they arise.

Although most previous cost of injury studies used a discount rate of 6 percent (e.g., Rice et al., 1989), we believe that rate is too high. Instead, the appropriate discount rate is probably between 1 and 3 percent. First, this range is likely to be used by courts in calculating appropriate compensation for injuries, because the U.S. Supreme Court stated that it would not review use of an inflation-free

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

discount rate between 1 percent and 3 percent but would consider reviewing the use of other rates (Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation v. Pfeifer, 103 Supreme Court Reporter, 1983:2541-2558). Second, there is evidence that workers apply a 2 percent discount rate when trading off present wages for the risk of future loss of life (Moore and Viscusi, 1990). Third, a Congressional Budget Office review of economic evidence determined that the most appropriate discount rate for public decision making was 2 percent (Hartman, 1990). In this study, we use a discount rate of 2.5 percent.

COSTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF VIOLENT BEHAVIOR

As stated above, we have identified three broad categories of costs: (1) the direct consequences of the injury, (2) society's response to the victimization, and (3) the offender's costs. This section attempts to enumerate all of the possible costs and consequences of these categories.

Direct Consequences of Violent Behavior

Table 1 summarizes the various costs and consequences of violent behavior. Victims incur many direct out-of-pocket expenses such as stolen or damaged property,7 medical costs, lost wages while away from work, and mental health or other victim-related treatment. Even if medical costs are reimbursed through insurance or employee benefit programs, society bears the cost through higher insurance premiums. In fact, because the provision of insurance requires administrative (overhead) costs, the loss is even higher than the medical cost itself. If the employee receives paid sick leave or workers' compensation during the recovery period, the employer bears the cost of the paid wages and the administrative cost of processing the payments. The employer may even have higher expenses due to lost productivity or the need to hire temporary help or to pay overtime in the interim. Thus, the total "out-of-pocket" portion of injury costs is actually higher than the sum of property losses, medical costs, and lost wages.

In addition to the monetary costs incurred by victims (or paid by third parties), many other nonmonetary costs are no less real but not as easily quantifiable.8 For example, injuries may result in either a temporary or a permanent inability to do housework.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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TABLE 1 Costs of Intentional Injury

Cost Category

Party That Directly Bears Costa

Direct property losses

(1) Losses not reimbursed by insurance

Victim

(2) Losses reimbursed by insurance

Society

(3) Administrative cost: insurance reimbursement

Society

(4) Recovery by police

Societyb

Medical and mental health care

(1) Charges not reimbursed by insurance

Victim

(2) Charges reimbursed by insurance

Society

(3) Administrative overhead of insurance coverage (item 2)

Society

Victim services

(1) Expenses charged to victim

Victim

(2) Expenses paid by service agency

Society

(3) Temporary labor and training of replacements

Society

Lost workdays

(1) Lost wages for unpaid workdays

Victim

(2) Lost productivity for paid workdays

Society

Lost school days

(1) Forgone wages due to lack of education

Victim

(2) Forgone nonpecuniary benefits of education

Victim

(3) Forgone social benefits due to lack of education

Society

Lost housework

Victim and family

Pain and suffering/quality of life

Victim

Loss of affection/enjoyment

Victim's family

Death

(1) Value of life

Victim

(2) Funeral and burial expenses

Victim's family

(3) Loss of affection/enjoyment

Victim's family

(4) Psychological injury/treatment

Victim's family

Legal costs associated with tort claims

Victim or victim's family

Long-term consequences of victimization

(1) Future victims

 

(2) Future social costs

 

a Ignores any recovery from offenders through legal action.

b See text for discussion of costs borne by society.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

Although little or no monetary loss might be associated with lost housework, one can estimate its monetary value.

Lost schoolwork for a student might also be valued. From the victim's perspective, this loss would be at least equal to the present discounted value of future wages forgone by a lack of education. In addition, to the extent that this lost education is not made up and the victim values education beyond the pure monetary benefits from increased earning potential, there might be "psychic" losses. Finally, education is often thought of as a public good—society values an educated population beyond the amount that the average individual would be willing to invest by him/herself. Thus, an additional social component of loss is associated with lost school days.

One of the potentially largest nonmonetary costs associated with victim injury is pain and suffering. Although pain and suffering does not involve a monetary loss, it may be monetized for purposes of comparison with other costs. Related to pain and suffering are the potential costs associated with the inability to continue some enjoyable leisure activities. These might be called "quality of life" costs.

In addition to the victim, the victim's family may incur costs. One obvious cost is any additional expense incurred or time spent by family members doing chores previously performed by the family member who was injured and is no longer able to do them. Another cost, "loss of affection/enjoyment," values spousal and family activities in which the victim can no longer participate due to the injury.

Costs also arise when injured victims die. In addition to the direct costs associated with a premature funeral, the value of the life itself is lost.

In a few instances, victims of violent behavior (or their families) may bring a private tort action against the party who injured the victim or against a third party for negligence (e.g., an unlit parking lot or insufficient hotel room security). These suits involve various legal and court costs.

Finally, we should consider the long-term consequences of intentional injury. For example, there is some evidence that victims of child abuse are more likely to become child abusers themselves. To the extent that a causal connection can be made, one should consider the future cost associated with child abuse to be a cost of today's incident. Of course, one also would need to discount these costs to present value.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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Society's Response to Violent Behavior

In addition to the costs imposed directly by the offender, society's response to victimization involves many different types of costs. These costs are summarized in Table 2. Violent behavior also has

TABLE 2 Costs of Society's Response to Intentional Injury

Cost Category

Party That Directly Bears Cost

Fear of crime

Potential victim

Precautionary expenditures/effort

Potential victim

Criminal justice system

Society

(1) Police and investigative costs

Society

(2) Prosecutors

Society

(3) Courts

Society

(4) Legal fees

 

(a) Public defenders

Society

(b) Private

Offenders

(5) Incarceration costs

Society

(6) Nonincarcerative sanctions

Society

(7) Victim time

Victim

(8) Jury and witness time

Jury/witness

Victim services

(1) Victim service organizations

Society

(2) Victim compensation programs

Society

(3) Victim time

Victim

Other noncriminal programs

(1) Hot lines and public service announcements

Society

(2) Community treatment programs

Society

(3) Private therapy/counseling

Society/offender

Incarcerated offender costs

(1) Lost wages

Offender/family

(2) Lost tax revenue and productivity

Society

(3) Value of lost freedom

Offender

(4) Psychological cost to family

Family of offender

"Overdeterrence" costs

(1) Innocent individuals accused of offense

Innocent party

(2) Restriction of legitimate activity

Society

(3) Cost of additional detection avoidance by offenders

Offender

"Justice" costs

(1) Constitutional protections to avoid false accusations

Society

(2) Cost of increasing detection rate to avoid differential punishment

Society

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

an impact on people who are not directly victimized, by increasing the level of fear in potential victims. Fear of victimization might also result in increased prevention expenditures on items such as security systems or firearms. It also might lead to changes in behavior, such as taking fewer walks at night.

The most visible cost associated with preventing future victimization is the criminal justice system. This includes government expenditures for police, prosecutors, public defenders, courts, prisons, and other nonincarcerative sanctions. It also includes private expenditures on criminal defense lawyers, as well as the amount of time spent by victims, juries, and witnesses dealing with the criminal justice system. As noted earlier, some of the cost of the criminal justice system might be more properly attributed to retribution than to preventive expenditures.

Some of society's response to violent behavior falls outside the criminal justice arena, with programs such as community treatment facilities and public service announcements.

Some of the costs of violent behavior fall directly on the offender who is apprehended and subject to the criminal justice system. Other costs are borne by the offender's family. For example, if the offender was working prior to incarceration, he/she will suffer from lost wages while in prison. Regardless of whether or not one wants to include the offender's utility as part of ''social welfare," those lost wages are a measure of the productivity loss to society. It is also possible that incarceration will reduce the future earning capacity of the offender.

A second potential cost is the value of lost freedom to an incarcerated offender. Beyond the social productivity loss, some would argue that society should consider the impact that prison has on the offender. Even if one wanted to include this as a cost element, it is particularly difficult to monetize.

A related and potentially more troubling cost associated with incarceration of offenders is the risk that the prison experience will increase the propensity of the offender to recidivate. To the extent this is true, if one were to compare the cost of imprisonment to the cost of probation (for example), any marginal increase in future crimes should be attributed to the cost of imprisonment.

Finally, there are two often overlooked categories of costs that we refer to as "overdeterrence" and "justice" costs. Although these costs are likely to be relatively small in terms of the overall cost of victimization, it is important to enumerate them because they have significant policy implications.

Overdeterrence costs are collateral consequences of imposing

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

penalties for violent behavior. First, innocent parties who might be accused of committing a crime will take costly actions to avoid such allegations. Second, violent offenders might increase their level of violence to reduce the risk of capture.

The cost of justice is determined primarily by society's willingness to take costly precautions to ensure that innocent individuals are not accused of crimes. Additional justice costs are incurred to the extent society chooses more costly crime control alternatives than would be required if the concern were solely with minimizing the cost for a given level of deterrence.

Offender Costs

Offenders might spend considerable time or resources committing a violent act. Although all of these costs are borne by the offender directly, society would also benefit from their absence. The most obvious cost would be the opportunity cost of the offender's time. That is, if the offender could be gainfully employed while not engaging in the violent behavior, society has lost that productivity. In addition, one might consider other resource costs, such as expenditures on weapons, that assist the offender in carrying out this behavior.

COST OF CRIME AND INJURY LITERATURE

This section briefly reviews the current state of knowledge in estimating the cost of injury. The literature has generally been focused either on the criminal justice area or on the public health/accident arena. Thus, studies have estimated the cost of such diverse policy concerns as crime, mental health, and automobile crashes.

Approaches to Measuring the Cost of Injury

Measuring the full costs of injury is a particularly difficult task, because many of the costs are not normally exchanged in the marketplace and have no obvious monetary value. This section briefly reviews some of the empirical approaches that have been used to place monetary values on such costs. The conceptual foundations for these various approaches have already been discussed.

We have distinguished between two types of costs—monetary and nonmonetary. Similarly, empirical approaches to estimating

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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the cost of injury fall into two broad categories—direct and indirect. Monetary costs generally can be estimated directly from survey data, especially those that involve direct out-of-pocket losses. Productivity losses also can be estimated directly from data such as wage rates, age, and the educational background of the victim.

Some nonmonetary costs can also be monetized by using direct approaches. "Contingent valuation" surveys ask respondents to place dollar values on various risks and outcomes in order to determine either WTA or WTP values. This survey approach has been used to place dollar values on such nonmarket goods as enhanced visibility and scenic beauty, as well as health-related qualities of air and water (Mitchell and Carson, 1989; Viscusi et al., 1989). Of course, contingent valuation surveys merely estimate WTP or WTA. Because respondents do not actually buy and sell the risky commodity, we cannot be certain that their response to a survey question is the same as their behavior would be if actually confronted with a real situation. Although we are unaware of its application to criminal victimization, applying contingent valuation surveys to crime seems like a natural extension of recent work in this area.

Another direct method of estimation is to estimate WTA based on actual jury awards for pain and suffering (Cohen, 1987, 1988a).9 This method measures the amount that a jury believes is required to compensate a victim in order to make the victim "whole" or indifferent between the two health states—no injury versus injury with compensation. Although this method is based on the same theoretical concept as WTA, since it is a jury's evaluation (and not the victim's) it is only an estimate of WTA.

Most nonmonetary costs are monetized by using indirect approaches. The most prevalent approach is "hedonic price estimation," where an observable market transaction is disaggregated into its various attributes—including the "risk" component. Hedonic pricing models have been applied to housing prices to estimate the value of various amenities, including the risk of crime (Thaler, 1978). They have also been applied to wage rates to determine worker willingness to accept an increased risk of injury or death—the so-called statistical value of life. For example, suppose an individual is willing to accept an increased risk of injury of 1 in 100,000 in exchange for $10. Collectively, 100,000 people would thus be willing to accept one additional injury among themselves in exchange for $1 million ($10 × 100,000). Thus, the WTA value for this injury is estimated to be $1 million. Although the latter studies are often referred to as WTP, in reality they are closer to

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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WTA, because workers voluntarily accept risk in exchange for added compensation. However, since risk is just one attribute of the labor market, we expect WTP and WTA to be the same for these market-determined levels of risk compensation. Similar studies on the purchase of consumer products designed to reduce the risk of death (e.g., smoke detectors) are WTP estimates. Following conventional terminology, throughout the remainder of this paper, we refer to value of life studies as WTP estimates. Reviews of these studies can be found in Fisher et al. (1989) and Miller (1990).

It is important to realize that most of these indirect estimates are attempts to measure the value of a small risk of injury or death—not the value of certain injury or death. The loss in utility due to certain injury or death is more than 1,000 times the utility loss due to a 1/1,000 risk of injury or death. Thus, for example, we would expect WTA estimates made by jury awards to be higher than WTA estimates using hedonic pricing estimation. This distinction is most stark when considering the risk of death. Although people often voluntarily accept increased risks of death in exchange for lower prices or higher wages, few individuals would accept any amount of money in exchange for certain death. Thus, the hedonic pricing approach used to estimate WTA and WTP is really only valid for valuing risks—not any one particular injury.

Finally, it should be noted that there is no definitive literature on how these value of life estimates vary by occupation or income (Miller, 1990:18). This is particularly important for purposes of estimating crime costs, because there is some evidence that the average crime victim is not representative of the average consumer or worker in the population. For example, unemployed persons have a three times higher risk of being injured by crime than employed persons, and those with annual incomes of less than $10,000 have more than double the risk of injury due to victimization than those with annual incomes of more than $20,000 (Harlow, 1989).

In addition, if victims are themselves involved in criminal activity (e.g., drug dealers or gang members), these individuals might display preferences toward risk that suggest they have a lower value of life than the average population. Indeed, there is some evidence that victims of assaults are more likely than the average population to have committed assaults themselves (Singer, 1981) and that homicide victims are themselves very likely to have a previous arrest record for crimes against the person (Wolfgang, 1958:178). However, not only do we lack adequate evidence on

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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appropriate WTP values for these populations, but a recent study of drug dealers fails to substantiate the hypothesis that their behavior exhibits an extremely low value of life (Reuter et al., 1990).10

Cost of Crime Literature

Previous studies of the cost of crime have generally attempted to estimate costs either directly from victim losses or indirectly from market or behavioral data. The direct cost estimates generally have included two components: (1) monetary losses such as property losses, medical expenses, and lost workdays; and (2) private and public expenditures designed to prevent future victimizations. Data on victim losses have come primarily from the National Crime Survey (NCS) (Shenk and Klaus, 1984). Data on public expenditures come from various sources, including the Bureau of Justice Statistics (1989b). For other studies based on these government estimates, see Gray (1979) and Zedlewski (1985, 1987).

One of the main limitations of these earlier studies is that they lacked data on the nonmonetary cost of crime (e.g., pain, suffering, fear, and reduced quality of life). As shown in Cohen (1988a), the dollar value of nonmonetary costs can far exceed the out-of-pocket costs of crime.

One method for estimating dollar values for the nonmonetary cost of crime is to infer property owners' willingness to pay for a safer neighborhood through higher property values. To the extent safety is capitalized in housing prices, we expect higher-crime neighborhoods to have lower housing prices, all else being equal. Several studies have attempted to isolate this effect through hedonic price estimation (Thaler, 1978; Hellman and Naroff, 1979; Rizzo, 1979; Clark and Cosgrove, 1990). Unfortunately, data limitations generally prevent these studies from isolating the cost of any individual crime type (Cohen, 1990). Instead, they estimate the cost of an aggregate measure such as the crime index.

Another method for estimating the nonmonetary costs of crime is to infer society's willingness to pay for reductions in crime from studies of society's willingness to pay for safety or its willingness to accept increased risks. Phillips and Votey (1981) combined these value of life estimates and the out-of-pocket costs of crime with society's perception of the seriousness of crime to arrive at crime-specific monetary estimates. However, their methodology was unable to account for the risk of injury and death for many crimes.

More recently, Cohen (1988a) combined estimates of the value

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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of life with jury award data on the pain and suffering from specific injuries to arrive at a dollar estimate of both the monetary and the nonmonetary costs of individual crimes to victims. The approach used in Cohen (1988a) is a hybrid of direct and indirect cost estimation. Direct costs are taken from NCS data, as well as several additional sources and assumptions where victim surveys are lacking (e.g., psychological counseling). The nonmonetary costs of pain, suffering, fear, and the risk of death are estimated by using indirect techniques. The cost of an increased risk of death is based on value of life estimates, whereas the cost of pain, suffering, and fear due to nonfatal injuries is based on the compensation approach, estimated from jury awards compensating victims for similar injuries.

Although Cohen (1988a) was the first comprehensive attempt to monetize the pain, suffering, and fear caused by individual crimes, because of data limitations, neither its theoretical foundation nor its empirical estimates were entirely satisfactory. The main data limitation was that neither ex ante nor ex post estimates were available for all costs. Value of life estimates were available only based on ex ante risks, whereas pain and suffering associated with specific injuries were available only from ex post jury awards. Thus, theoretically, Cohen was forced to use a hybrid of ex ante valuation and ex post compensation. If one is interested in determining the value to society of reducing crime, costs should be based on ex ante measures. However, if the purpose is primarily to determine victim compensation, an ex post analysis would be preferable.

Aside from this conceptual problem, Cohen (1988a) was also subject to several important data limitations that probably lowered the cost estimates below their true values. First, as in virtually all previous cost of crime studies—medical costs, property losses, and lost wages were taken from the NCS. This results in an underestimate of victimization costs, because the NCS asks respondents to report on crimes committed during the past six months. On average, therefore, medical costs are limited to the first three months following the incident. The NCS also excludes mental health-related costs. Although the survey asks respondents if they lost time on the job, it fails to ask about lost housework or school days. Also, due to the hierarchical nature of the NCS reports, property losses are likely to be biased. For example, if a person was both raped and robbed, published NCS data would report the property loss under rape—not robbery. Although this might not result in any aggregate bias in the property loss estimate,

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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it certainly does introduce bias in the cost estimates for individual crimes.

A second limitation of the data used in Cohen (1988a) is that nonmonetary costs were estimated by using body part-specific injuries from automobile crashes and other similar injuries. The jury award for pain and suffering was estimated for each type of injury, and applied to the distribution of injuries normally encountered by crime victims (as estimated by the NCS). The problem with this approach is that it is not obvious that a broken arm (for example) resulting from an auto crash and leading to $2,000 in medical costs and lost wages, causes the same pain and suffering as a broken arm resulting from a physical assault. Cohen attempted to adjust for this fact by adding "mental suffering" to the body part pain and suffering estimates. Based on the estimated incidence of mental suffering for each type of crime, jury award estimates for these mental injuries were then added to the pain and suffering for physical injuries.

Cost of Injury Literature

In response to the burgeoning use of health care services and rising national health care expenditures, policy makers have focused increased attention on health resource allocation and cost containment strategies. The first economic studies of illness and disease emphasized methodological issues, such as how to deal with discounting, employment rates, transfer payments, and the value of household labor. Landmark studies (e.g., Rice, 1966; Cooper and Rice, 1976; Hartunian et al., 1981) identified the relevant monetary components in the health sector, such as expenditures for emergency services, hospitalization, physician services, specialized paramedic care, outpatient clinical care, pharmaceuticals, nursing home care, and medical appliances. These studies also examined the nonhealth sector costs (e.g., structural modifications to a patient's home necessitated by long-term impairment, additional expenses for household help, administrative costs of insurance or government-funded health coverage, and legal/court costs) borne directly by patients or by other affected individuals11 or organizations.

Early cost of illness studies rarely considered injury as a distinct category of illness. However, injury is now acknowledged as the fourth leading cause of all deaths, as well as the leading cause of death for children and adults under the age of 45 (Rice et al., 1989). Nevertheless, aside from annual reports on the costs of

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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consumer product injuries treated in hospitals or emergency rooms (Consumer Product Safety Commission, various years), fewer than two dozen cost of injury studies have been reported in the literature since the 1960s.12

Studies have used differing methodologies, such as discount rates that ranged from 4 to 10 percent. Time frames for estimation also varied; some presented incidence costs, whereas others presented prevalence estimates. Some reports detailed only the average costs of injuries; others provided data on the average cost of injury by cause. For example, five studies relate to motor vehicle injury (Smart and Sanders, 1976; Faigin, 1976; Hartunian et al., 1981; National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1983, 1987; Miller and Luchter, 1988); two each to unintentional injury (Etter, 1987; Miller et al., 1987) and spinal cord injury (Smart and Sanders, 1976; Bureau of Economic Research, 1985); and one to trauma-related injury (Munoz, 1984). None of these studies specifically addressed the issue of costs due to victim injury.

The most comprehensive and systematic lifetime cost of injury study (Rice et al., 1989) quantified the magnitude of the national injury problem in terms of the major causes of injury, disaggregated by age, sex, and class of injury. The study concluded that the total lifetime cost of treatment, rehabilitation, and lost productivity for the 57 million persons injured during 1985 imposed a $158 billion burden on the U.S. economy, or $2,775 per injured person (Rice et al., 1989:38). This cost estimate includes only the monetary consequences of injury. Rice et al. (1989:109) further estimate the total cost of injuries in 1985, including pain, suffering, and lost quality of life, at $1.1 trillion.

Rice et al. (1989) aggregated the cost of all injuries, which does not permit one to isolate the cost of victim injuries as distinct from those injuries not intentionally caused.13 Although injury is now perceived as a costly public health problem, little attention has been focused on the explicit role of victim injury in contributing to such costs. The causes, circumstances, and even numbers of victim injuries, such as assaults, are not well known (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 1985). A recent review of the progress in injury control initiatives suggested that this area has been slighted due to conventional perceptions that intentionally inflicted injury is largely unpreventable (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 1988). In addition, the data needed to examine victim injury separately are limited. For example, roughly 60 percent of the data on hospitalized injury used in Rice et al. (1989) differentiate victim injury,

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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but none of the data on less serious injury make this distinction. Consequently, the study could not estimate the costs of victim injury credibly.

THE COST OF VIOLENT BEHAVIOR

This section reviews and supplements existing cost estimates associated with violent behavior. The cost of society's response to victimization is described in a subsequent section. It should be noted that throughout this paper, we include attempted victimizations and those that do not result in actual physical injury.

COST OF VICTIM TREATMENT AND OTHER DIRECT COSTS

Medical Care

Medical costs are defined as direct medical expenses, including physician, hospital, prescription drugs, and other treatment or appliances for physical injury, regardless of whether such costs have been reimbursed by insurance.

Table 3 presents estimates of the number of victims, together with medical costs, averaged across all injured and uninjured victims,

TABLE 3 Medical Costs Due to Victim Injury, 1987

Offense

Number of Victims

Average Medical Costs per Injured Victim

Number of Injured Victims

Percent Injured

Average Medical Costs per Victim

Rape

147,000

$ 616

90,000a

.61a

$ 376

Robbery

1,068,500

344

383,000

.36

124

Assault

4,930,000

527

1,412,000

.29

153

Murder

20,100

5,370

20,100

1.00

5,370

a Nearly half of these reported no physical injury other than the rape itself.

SOURCES: First-year medical costs for rape, robbery, and assault are taken from the National Crime Survey (U.S. Department of Justice, 1989a). Long-term costs were estimated from worker injury data (National Council on Compensation Insurance). Murder costs are taken from Rice et al. (1989) and include the cost of a premature funeral. The number of victims was obtained from the National Crime Survey and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (for murder). Estimates of rape, robbery, and assault include attempted victimizations.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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disaggregated by the type of crime. These estimates are $376 for rape, $124 for robbery, $153 for assault, and $5,370 for murder. Nonfatal crime incidence and medical costs derive from the 1987 NCS, whereas the number of murders is taken from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) Uniform Crime Report (UCR).

NCS data are dependent on the self-report of individuals in sampled households, queried as to the extent of victimization experienced in the six months preceding the survey.14 Individuals are asked to recall if they were victimized within the defined time frame. Respondents report all injuries incurred due to victimization, given a listing of possibilities that includes rape; attempted rape; knife or stab wounds; gunshot or bullet wounds; broken bones or teeth knocked out; internal injuries; being knocked unconscious; bruises, black eye, cuts, scratches, swelling, and chipped teeth; and other (U.S. Department of Justice, 1989a). Victims reporting injury are asked if medical care, including self-treatment, was received and the location of such treatment (e.g., at the scene, in a hospital emergency room). Those individuals are further queried as to inpatient hospital duration, if any, and total medical costs, including doctor and hospital bills, medicine, therapy, braces, and other related expenses, regardless of whether such costs were covered by insurance.

The NCS data have several limitations. In addition to sampling and nonsampling errors, the NCS does not include victimization of organizations and commercial establishments, children under age 12, transients, the homeless, individuals in institutional settings such as nursing homes, and military personnel in the sampling frame.15 The medical costs estimated here do not include any victim injury costs borne by nonsampled populations.

A second limitation of the NCS is the implicit assumption that victims accurately recollect and report incidents that took place within the prescribed time frame (i.e., respondents report all incidents relevant to the time frame and, conversely, do not "telescope in" injuries from earlier time frames). Further, NCS is known to underreport both the incidence and the cost of certain types of crimes, such as domestic violence or assaultive behavior between nonstrangers.16 Efforts to strengthen NCS data in these areas were beyond the scope of the current analysis.

A closely related issue concerns individuals' abilities to accurately report the degree of injury and the extent of full medical costs. Self-reported injury and medical costs are suspect for several reasons. Victim selections of injury categories from the NCS listing may not accurately reflect actual medical diagnoses. Thus,

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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reported costs may be inadvertently assigned to erroneous injury categories.

A related consideration is that survey respondents, polled every six months, report only costs incurred between victimization and the interview date, which might be only a few days post-victimization. In addition, since the survey limits self-report to a six-month time frame, long-term medical and other costs are not reflected. Further, victims who have suffered minor injuries may forget small costs, whereas those who suffered severe injuries may not know the cumulative costs of present, much less future, treatment by multiple health care providers. Victim-furnished information is also questionable, especially for hospitalized injury, because bills are often sent directly to the insurer without the insured learning of the amount.17

Optimally, medical diagnoses of injury and associated costs are captured directly from hospital, physician, and other treatment-related records. Earlier costs of injury/illness studies relied on such independent incidence data sources as the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), the National Accident Sampling System (NASS), the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS), and the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) (for examples, see Hartunian et al., 1981; Miller and Luchter, 1988; Luchter et al., 1989; and Rice et al., 1989).18 Unfortunately, potentially relevant data bases (e.g., NEISS, NHDS, or the Comprehensive Health and Medical Program for the Uniformed Services [CHAMPUS]) have not yet been refined for application to victim injury analyses. Such refinement was largely beyond the scope of the present effort.

Despite the limitations noted, the NCS remains the most comprehensive source of information currently available on the incidence and magnitude of harm associated with nonfatal victimization. Therefore, this analysis created a hierarchy of injuries derived from the original NCS data. The data indicated that 61 percent of rape and attempted rape victims reported injury (although nearly half of these had no physical injuries other than the rape itself). Injuries were reported by 36 percent of robbery and attempted robbery victims, and 29 percent of assault and attempted assault victims.

The concern for estimating the cost of longer-term medical care for nonfatal injuries was addressed by extrapolating information from the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) Detailed Claims Information (DCI) data base.19 The NCCI data are organized using a two-digit code for body part and a two-digit

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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code for nature of injury: these codes did not always match the NCS injury choices. Where possible, injury categories in the two data bases were conceptually linked based on a series of defensible assumptions, for example, that medical treatment of fractures reported in NCCI was approximately equivalent to treatment of broken bones reported in NCS.

Two caveats should be noted. First, the NCCI data base does not contain categories equivalent to rape or attempted rape. The NCS data reference only the short-term medical costs associated with those injuries, but there are potentially costly long-term effects, as well. Such possibilities include the costs of pregnancy/abortion, venereal disease, and human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) resulting from rape, as well as mental illness and substance abuse (discussed further below). Data on the incidence and costs of such consequences related to rape/attempted rape are not readily available. Therefore, we applied the most conservative NCCI inflator (i.e., 92% of costs accruing within the first year) to estimate the long-term costs. Thus, our estimate may be significantly underrepresentative of true costs, particularly those associated with recurring sexually transmitted diseases or HIV/AIDS infection.

Second, in some cases, victimization may result in aggravation of preexisting conditions that later manifest in significant health problems. For example, elderly individuals may be at greater future risk of heart attack due to victimization (Burt and Katz, 1985). The NCS data may not capture such delayed-onset effects. To some extent, these effects may be reflected in our estimates of longer-term medical costs, but it is unlikely that all such effects have been included.

Medical costs resulting from murders were based on the assumptions that 50 percent of the victims expire at the scene and receive no medical care; 29 percent are transported to an emergency room, receiving medical care at a charge of $1,590 per fatality;20 and 21 percent receive emergency care ($1,590) and are admitted to a hospital for an average of 5.85 days in the intensive care unit at a daily cost of $1,697.21 Medical costs for murder victims also include the additional cost associated with a premature funeral, $2,450 in 1987.22 With these assumptions, average medical costs per murder victim were an estimated $5,370.

Mental Health Care

Incidence of Mental Health Injury Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is now well established as a clinical diagnosis often caused

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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by criminal victimization. Among the symptoms are ''compulsive repetition" of the traumatic event in the victim's mind, as well as "numbness or unresponsiveness to, or reduced involvement with, the external world" (Horowitz, 1986:244). The cause of posttraumatic stress disorder is usually an event that "lies outside the range of common experiences … [such as] … rapes, muggings, assaults, military combat, torture, natural disasters, traumatically frightening or painful medical experiences, deaths of loved ones, and accidents such as airplane and car crashes." According to one estimate, in the six months following a traumatic life event, the risk of developing a schizophrenic illness increases by a factor of two to three, the risk of depression increases two- to fivefold, and the risk of a suicide attempt by a factor of six (Paykel, 1978:251).

Despite a large and growing literature on PTSD and the psychological impact of intentional injury on victims, there appear to be no prior estimates of mental health-related expenses for victims of intentional injury. In fact, the National Crime Survey does not ask respondents about mental health treatment, presumably because of the sensitivity of such questions.

Although a large literature documents posttraumatic stress disorder and rape trauma syndrome, few studies have systematically estimated the psychological impact of intentional injury on victims. The few existing studies rely on samples of victims who seek treatment, which likely biases the results in the direction of overestimating the impact of victimization. Few of these studies are able to control for the psychological well-being of the victim prior to victimization. Finally, most of the literature concentrates on rape victims. Few studies have looked at robbery and assault victims.

Another problem with existing studies of psychological injury is that they are more concerned with establishing the causal connection than with quantifying the extent or magnitude of the problem. Even studies that attempt to use a control group compare mean scores on standardized psychological tests. The fact that victimized groups have higher mean scores on these tests supports the hypothesis that victimization causes an increase in psychological injury, but it does little to help us quantitatively measure the frequency and severity of injury.

Based on the few studies that attempted to control for some of the above-mentioned problems, Cohen (1988a:546-547) estimated the rate of traumatic neurosis to be 40 percent in rape victims, whereas the rate of severe psychological injuries was estimated to be 10 percent for rape victims and 2 percent for robbery victims.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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More recent studies provide evidence that these earlier estimates were within the correct order of magnitude for rape, but probably too low for other crimes.23 Wirtz and Harrell (1987) report that high levels of fear, anxiety, and stress persist in crime victims six months after their victimization. They found that physical assault victims (rape, domestic violence, and nondomestic assault) had higher levels of fear, anxiety, and stress than nonassault victims (robbery and burglary).

Kilpatrick et al. (1987) report on the results of extensive interviews with 391 adult females in the Charleston, S.C. area. They found that 27.8 percent of all crime victims experienced PTSD at some point in their lives following the criminal victimization, with rates varying from 11.1 percent for attempted molestation to 57.1 percent for completed rape. Aggravated assault victims reported a 36.8 percent PTSD rate, whereas robbery victims reported 18.2 percent.

Although this is one of the few studies that attempts to estimate the frequency of psychological injury for crimes other than rape, its usefulness is somewhat limited. First, it was a study only of female victims. This is of particular importance in attempting to assign frequency estimates to robbery and assault victims, because we do not know if male victims experience the same levels of psychological injury. There is some limited evidence, however, that elderly male victims of crime exhibit similar rates of fear as elderly female victims—at least in the short term (Berg and Johnson, 1979). Furthermore, Resick's (1987:472-473) preliminary results suggest that both female and male robbery victims report reactions similar to those of rape victims—although some differences are apparent.

Second, the study was not entirely representative of women in Charleston, let alone women in the United States. The "sample members were slightly younger, more likely to be white, and possessed slightly higher incomes than the Charleston County population" (Kilpatrick et al., 1987:483).

Finally, this study does not control for the underlying rate of PTSD and hence is not able to establish a causal connection between a criminal event and PTSD. It is possible, for example, that some of these PTSD episodes were (partially or totally) caused by other life events, such as loss of a family member. It is also possible that PTSD rates are higher after a second victimization (53.7 percent of the sample reported more than one victimization).

The Kilpatrick et al. (1987) study can be compared to the estimates

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

of psychological injury for rape victims in Cohen (1988a) by computing a weighted average PTSD rate for completed and attempted rape. The Kilpatrick study estimates this rate to be 35.2 percent, compared to the 50 percent estimate used in Cohen (1988a). However, this 50 percent estimate includes 10 percent of victims who are assumed to suffer from severely disabling psychological injury and 40 percent who suffer from emotional distress. Many of the latter victims might not have suffered symptoms severe enough to be classified as having PTSD.

Absent better data, we made several assumptions to estimate rates of psychological injury. First, although the Kilpatrick study includes estimates for attempted rapes and molestations, it does not include attempted robberies or assaults. Thus, we assume that the ratio of PTSD injury for completed versus attempted victimizations is about the same as it is for rape and molestation cases. That is, we estimate that victims of completed crimes experience about 3.3 times as many PTSD injuries as victims of attempts. Thus, based on the frequency of attempts versus completed crimes and the rate of PTSD reported in Kilpatrick et al., we can estimate the frequency of PTSD to be 19.0 percent for aggravated assault and 13.8 percent for robbery.

Second, although Cohen (1988a) estimated that the ratio of emotional distress to severely disabling psychological injury is about 4 to 1 in rape victims, this is probably too low for assault and robbery victims. Although we have no evidence of what this ratio should be for other crimes, we assume it is twice as high as rape (i.e., 8 to 1). Table 4 reports these estimates for rape, robbery,

TABLE 4 Estimated Rate of Psychological Injury and Potential Mental Health Costs, 1987

Offense

Frequency of Emotional Distress

Frequency of Severely Disabling Illness

Total Cost per Victima

Mental Health Costsb

Productivity Costsb

Rape

40.0

10.0

$5,250

$3,886

$1,364

Robbery

12.3

1.5

1,200

887

310

Assault

5.6

0.7

550

361

188

a Averaged over all victims whether or not they received psychological injury. Based on estimated average mental health cost of $6,500 for emotional distress and $26,500 for severely disabling illness.

b Total cost per victim in column 4 is assumed to be apportioned between mental health care and productivity in the same ratio as that estimated for medical care versus productivity loss.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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and assault. For example, the 13.8 percent rate for robbery is assumed to be 12.3 percent emotional distress and 1.5 percent severely disabling psychological injury. It should also be noted that the estimate for assault in Table 4 is reduced considerably to account for the inclusion of simple assaults and attempted simple assaults—which are not assumed to cause psychological injury.

Although we are unaware of any random or controlled studies on the incidence of psychological injury in childhood physical and sexual abuse cases, there is ample evidence that these victimizations can lead to serious psychological disorders. For example, it has been reported that among clinical populations of psychiatric patients, childhood sexual abuse was found in 75-90 percent of those with multiple personality disorders and 22-44 percent of female psychiatric inpatients. Incest has been reported in 14-46 percent of female psychiatric patients (Coons et al., 1989:326). Although there is no proof of causal connection, it should be noted that these rates are higher than most estimates of the incidence of sexual abuse in the general population.

Mental Health Costs For physical injuries, we were able to apply crime-specific estimates of the medical expense and lost wages to arrive at estimates of what a jury would award for the pain and suffering associated with that type injury. Since we have no comparable mental health expense and lost wage estimates for psychological injury, we use the estimates derived from jury award data in Cohen (1988a). If we assume that there were no lost wages or household production, this would translate into about 52 visits at $80 per visit ($4,160) for "traumatic neurosis" and 310 visits ($24,800) for "severely disabling psychological injury."24 By comparison, data in Harwood et al. (1984) suggest that the average annual costs of an active case of mental illness are roughly $5,000 for medical treatment plus $6,000 in productivity losses. The productivity losses result primarily from suicides. Additional costs result from alcohol and drug abuse associated with mental illness but were not estimated.

Table 4 summarizes the estimated rate of psychological injury and mental health-related costs to victims, including both mental health care and productivity losses. To apportion estimates to the two types of losses, we assume that the ratio of medical to productivity losses is the same for physical injuries as for mental injuries. It should be noted that these estimates are based on only a few studies, most of which exclude male victims. Because of the lack of data, we have excluded child abuse.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

One problem with this approach is the assumption that all psychologically injured victims seek mental health treatment. Although this is obviously not true, we have no data that would shed light on the correct percentage. Thus, assuming that the estimated percentage of psychologically injured victims is correct, we have overestimated the monetary mental health costs. Instead, the estimate should be considered the potential mental health costs.

There is another important reason for not reducing this estimate to account for those who need psychological counseling but do not receive treatment. In a later section, we estimate the mental pain and suffering associated with victim injury, based on the amount of money spent on mental health care. Individuals who do not receive needed treatment still suffer from pain and suffering. In fact, they probably suffer more than those who ultimately receive needed treatment. Thus, we would underestimate mental pain and suffering if we adjusted the mental health costs downward.

Although the estimates in Table 4 look somewhat "reasonable," we reiterate that this is an area of research in which data are still too sparse to permit any confidence in the actual estimates.25 Instead, they provide some basis of comparison with the magnitude of more easily discernible costs, such as medical and property losses.

Monetary Losses to Victims: Cash and Property

Table 5 reports NCS data for nonmedical monetary losses to victims of rape, robbery, and assault. Separate estimates are made for cash, property stolen, and property damage. In each case, the average loss is given for those who report losses, along with the percentage of the victim population that incurs that loss. As is clear from these estimates, the cash and property losses associated with victimization involving injury are small relative to many of the other costs estimated here. The average rape victim or assault victim incurs about $10 in cash and property losses, whereas the average robbery (or attempted robbery) victim loses $335.

Indirect Monetary and Nonmonetary Losses

The consequences of victimization can be far reaching. According to Burt and Katz (1985:330), "During the weeks or months following the [rape], women frequently make costly changes in

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 5 Summary of Nonmedical Monetary Losses per Victim, 1987

Offense

Cash Loss per Victim With Cash Loss

Percent Victims With Cash Loss

Property Stolen per Victim With Property Loss

Percent Victims With Property Loss

Property Damage per Victim With Property Damage

Percent Victims With Property Damage

Average Loss Over All Victims

Rape

$207

4

$ 27

5

$ 15

5

$ 11

Robbery

192

38

557

45

157

6

335

Assault

0

0

0

0

200

5

10

NOTE: Attempted rapes, robberies, and assaults are included in these averages.

SOURCE: National Crime Survey data.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

their lifestyles; this may involve moving to a 'better' neighborhood, buying expensive security systems, or avoiding work situations which they suddenly perceive as dangerous." It is also possible that nominal dollar losses, such as cash stolen or the value of lost workdays, underestimate the true monetary impact of victimization. For example, a crime victim might be forced into defaulting on a mortgage or lose a job due to lost workdays. An elderly victim on a fixed income might have to temporarily forgo food or heat, leading to detrimental health consequences. However, we are unaware of any studies that attempt to quantify either the incidence of these losses or their monetary value. Future studies of these indirect losses would be of interest.

EMERGENCY RESPONSE TO VICTIMIZATION

This section describes the costs that public agencies incur in responding to victimization and dealing with its immediate consequences. The costs of investigation aimed at capturing and convicting the offender are not included here, because they are primarily costs of preventing future victimizations, as discussed in the next section.

Victim Services

Victim service organizations provide many services to victims of crime, including counseling, temporary shelter, and financial assistance. Although one might argue these costs should be classified with society's response to victimization, we have included them here because they are designed to assist the victim directly. Of course, they may also help prevent future victimization, as in the case of centers for battered women. Since victims are likely to suffer more severe consequences and higher costs in the absence of these services, we include costs of victim services in this section.

According to the Office for Victims of Crime (1988), there are more than 2,000 victim service programs around the country. This may be an underestimate of the actual number of programs: Smith and Freinkel (1988:156) found more than 900 programs for battered women alone in 1986.

Although we do not know how much is spent for victim services by state or local governments or private organizations, there are several ways of arriving at "ballpark" estimates of expenditures. The Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) requires at least a 25

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

percent match for existing programs, although "soft" matches (e.g., "in-kind" donations, such as volunteer time) are eligible (Office for Victims of Crime, 1988). The 1988 report categorizes program recipients by the percentage of their budget supported by VOCA funds. Assuming that the size distribution of agency budgets is evenly distributed across percentage support, we estimate that VOCA accounted for about 26 percent of all supported agency budgets.26 At most, VOCA supports 70 percent of victim service agencies (based on the assertion that there are "over 2,000 programs" and the 1,422 programs supported by VOCA). Thus, VOCA funds account for no more than 18 percent of all victim service program expenditures. Based on total VOCA funding of $35.4 million, this would imply a lower bound on total expenditures of approximately $200 million.

This estimate implies that the average annual budget of a victim service program is $200,000 ($200 million divided by 2,000 programs). In fact, according to a survey of 36 independent victim assistance programs, the median annual operating budget was $200,000 (Webster, 1988:3). However, the survey noted that the median program relied on 5 full-time staff members, 3 part-time staff members, and 20 volunteers. Thus, if one were to include the value of volunteer time, the opportunity cost of these programs could easily double or triple.

During fiscal year 1986, $35.4 million was granted by states to various victim assistance programs under funds received from VOCA. Table 6 lists these grants by victimization category. Given the assumption that the multiple categories in Table 6 are allocated

TABLE 6 Victim Assistance Program (federal funds)

Offense

Funds

Number of Programs

Sexual assault only

$ 5,129,646

240

Spouse abuse only

8,629,079

427

Child abuse only

4,724,927

219

Sexual assault and spouse abuse

3,391,890

167

Sexual assault and child abuse

1,075,406

30

Spouse abuse and child abuse

1,421,077

34

Sexual assault, spouse abuse, and child abuse

2,688,916

97

Victims in general

6,820,493

226

Other special victims

1,392,383

45

Total

$35,375,806

1,489

 

SOURCE: Office of Victims of Crime (1988).

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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TABLE 7 Estimated Victim Service Program Expenditures by Type of Crime

Offense

Expenditures (millions $)

Total Victims

Cost per Victim

Rape

$ 45.9

147,286

$311

Spouse Abuse

66.3

 

 

Child Abuse

38.2

 

 

General/other

149.6

 

 

Total

$200.0

 

 

equally between constituent categories (e.g., funds designated "sexual assault and spouse abuse" are shared equally by the two), Table 7 estimates the total and per victim cost of victim programs. This is based on the earlier assumption that federal funds represent 18 percent of total expenditures.

According to the Office of Victims of Crime (1988:87-90), 41 states reported eligible victim compensation programs in fiscal year 1987. The total amount paid to victims in these 41 states was $101,563,900. Table 8 breaks down average victim compensation per case involving compensation by offenses.

Based on the above estimates, Table 9 estimates the amount of victim compensation per victim. Note that no estimate is available for robbery. Also, it is assumed that all sex offenses involve rape, so this estimate is probably too high.

The above discussion of victim services is admittedly very limited. A host of other services directed toward victims are not included. A few examples include foster care for children (e.g., resulting from either domestic violence or single parents who are incarcerated or killed) and victim crisis counseling available at various medical facilities. A comprehensive study of victim services would be desirable.

Police Response Administrative Costs

Table 10 presents estimates of the emergency response costs for police: $78 for rape, $50 for robbery, $30 for assault, and $115 for murder. These estimates exclude the cost of investigation, because these costs have been assigned to "society's response to victimization" in the next section of the paper. Police response

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 8 Victim Compensation by Offense, 1987

Offense

Total Compensation

Number of Cases

Average Compensation per Case

Murder

$15,371,643

5,868

$2,620

Sex offenses

5,329,206

4,551

1,171

Assault

57,666,244

24,508

2,353

Child abuse

1,917,658

896

2,140

Child sexual abuse

9,031,115

7,880

1,146

Spouse abuse

232,375

259

897

Other violent

9,275,201

3,987

2,326

DWI/DUI

4,358,973

1,457

2,992

MV assault

1,901,870

696

2,733

Other

5,479,615

6,130

894

Total

110,563,900

56,232

1,966

NOTE: DWI = driving while intoxicated; DUI = driving under the influence; MV = motor vehicle.

SOURCE: Office for Victims of Crime (1988).

TABLE 9 Average Victim Compensation, 1987

Offense

Total Victims

Compensated Victims

Percentage Compensated

Average Payment

Average Compensation Over All Victims

Murder

20,100

5,868

29

$2,620

$765

Rape

147,286

4,551

3

1,171

36

Assault

4,930,149

24,508

0.5

2,353

12

NOTE: Includes attempted rape and attempted assault.

SOURCE: Table 3 (number of victims) and Table 8 (compensation).

times were estimated from a survey we conducted of several police departments (i.e., Dade County, Florida; San Antonio, Texas; San Jose, California). Since these data represent crimes known to the police, the final figures have been adjusted to account for the percentage of crime not known to the police (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1989a:Table 92).

Unit costs of police response were calculated as salary multiplied by the average time spent on a case per category of crime.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 10 Police Response Administrative Costs (averaged over all victims), 1987

Offense

Average Number of Hours

Percentage Police Cost per Reported Case

Reported to Police (Table 18)

Cost per Case

Murder

3.5

$115

91.7

$105

Rape

2.4

78

55.7

43

Robbery

1.5

50

44.4

22

Assault

0.9

30

47.7

14

NOTE: Rape, robbery, and assault include attempts.

SOURCE: Number of hours based on survey of Dade County, Fla.; San Antonio, Tex.; and San Jose, Calif. police departments. Dollar costs per hour are taken from Miller and Luchter (1988).

Police salaries, including fringe benefits, were estimated at $22 per hour, based on census data for salaries and a survey of fringe benefit rates in police departments (Miller and Luchter, 1988). To account for officer, supervisory, and support personnel administrative time, the average time spent on a case was inflated by a factor of 1.5. Although some percentage of police time spent on crime investigation is likely to be overtime, due to lack of data we were unable to account for this expense.

The police response estimates do not include all possible police costs associated with victim injury. For example, the cost of injury incurred by police officers during investigation of incidents of violent behavior is not reflected here.27

Emergency Transport

Table 11 presents estimates of emergency ambulance costs, disaggregated by crime and distributed across all victims: $6 for rape, $4 for robbery, and $2 for assault. Because no data were available on the frequency of other modes of emergency transportation (such as helicopters), they are not included here. Although NCS includes information on the number of victims requiring hospital treatment, no data on mode of transportation are included. Absent better data, we assume that all individuals who were admitted as hospital inpatients had been transported by ambulance and that no individuals who were treated as outpatients received emergency transportation. Although in reality some victims treated

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 11 Emergency Transport Costs (averaged over all victims), 1987

Offense

Number of Victims

Number of Hospital Admissions

Percentage of Victims Transported

Average Cost of Transport

Murder

20,100

 

100.0

$465

Rape

147,000

6,400

4.3

6

Robbery

1,068,500

29,800

2.8

4

Assault

4,930,000

60,400

1.2

2

NOTE: Rape, robbery, and assault include attempts.

SOURCE: Hospital admissions taken from the National Crime Survey. Cost assumed to be $145 per transport, from Rice at al. (1989). Murder costs include the cost of coroner.

as outpatients arrived by ambulance and some inpatients were privately transported, we implicitly assume that such cases cancel one another out.

Emergency transport costs for nonfatal injuries were estimated to be $145 per one-way transport (inflated to 1987 dollars from the 1985 National Medical Care Utilization and Expenditure Survey figure reported by Rice et al., 1989).

Data on transport for murder victims were not available. However, approximately 94 percent of motor vehicle crash fatalities are doubly transported; first by ambulance and then by coroners' vehicles (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1983). By assuming similar double transport occurs for 94 percent of murder victims, emergency transport costs per victim were estimated at $465. This includes one-way ambulance charges of $145 for the 94 percent transported by ambulance, plus the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (1983) estimate of $330 per fatality for coroners costs (in 1987 dollars).

VICTIM PRODUCTIVITY COSTS

Table 12 presents productivity loss estimates related to physical injury. (Table 4 contains estimates of productivity loss due to mental health injuries.) Estimates of productivity losses resulting from victim injuries were based on lost workdays, lost housework days, and lost school days. For those individuals who were nonfatally injured, estimated work loss days due to injury were derived from the NCS data covering the first six-month period postinjury. Victims

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 12 Estimated Cost of Lost Productivity (averaged over all victims), 1987

Offense

Due to Medical Reasons

Average Work Loss

Average Lost Housework

Average Lost Schoolwork for Student

Average Lost Productivity Due to Legal Process or Product Repair

Rape

$135

$29

$32

$105

Robbery

66

21

25

46

Assault

42

10

27

19

Murder

---------------------$610,000-----------------

 

NOTE: Lost productivity due to mental health-related injuries is reported in Table 4. Rape, robbery, and assault include attempts.

who lost days reported average losses of 16 workdays due to rape, 12.5 workdays due to robbery, and 13 workdays due to assault. The percentage of victims reporting lost workdays due to injury was 4 percent for assault, 7 percent for robbery, and 11 percent for rape. The value of lost workdays was estimated to be $75, based on $8.98 per hour for a seven-hour work day, plus 19.7 percent for fringe benefits (Bush, 1990:Tables C24 and C44).

The productivity losses reported here are likely to underestimate the true losses for at least two reasons. First, respondents report only work lost from the date of victimization to the date of interview, a period that could vary from one day to six months. Second, the data do not include longer-term work losses, future recurring injury-related work losses, or those associated with permanent impairment. Future studies could be enhanced by additional data on the percentage of injured victims whose work loss and recovery in general require more than six months.

The productivity cost estimate in Table 12 also omits many costs incurred by employers, such as (1) training replacements for victims who never return to work, (2) the loss of unique skills of some workers who do not return, and (3) hiring temporary help or paying overtime to handle the work load of temporarily absent employees.

Because NCS does not query respondents about lost housework days, we made several assumptions to estimate these losses. Primarily, we assumed that injured victims do not return to housework prior to returning to the workplace.28 For victims who reported lost workdays, we estimated lost housework days at 365/243 (i.e.,

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

the ratio of possible housework days to workdays based on a seven-day housework week and a five-day work week) times the number of reported workdays lost. The methodology for estimating these housework losses is contained in Miller et al. (1989a:306).29 For those who did not report employment and were over the age of 19 (i.e., not assumed to be students), we assumed that lost housework days were the same as for those who reported employment. The mean annual value of housekeeping services was estimated to be $5,170 for the employed and $9,130 for the nonstudent, nonemployed (based on Rice et al., 1989:225).

The NCS also excludes lost school days due to victim injury. Although the data base documents student status, that information was not available to the authors at the time this study was being conducted. Instead, we assumed that 34 percent were students, because 34 percent of the victims were between the ages of 12 and 19. This assumption may overstate the proportion of students among victims, since a fair percentage of late adolescents, who are most at risk for victimization, are no longer in school. Conversely, some older college and graduate students are victimized.

The school year was assumed to equal 166 days. The value of lost school days was calculated by using the average number of lost workdays reported, reduced by 166/243 to account for the seasonality of the school year. The value of each lost school year was estimated to be $3,975, based on the annual cost per pupil in average daily attendance (Bureau of the Census, 1989:Table 229). Dividing by the number of school days per year, the value of a lost school day was estimated as $24. This valuation may be conservative because the economy obtains positive returns from educational investment (Psacharopoulos, 1981).

The NCS also asks respondents the number of lost workdays due either to the legal process or to property repair. Using the above procedure for inferring lost household production from reported lost wages, we estimated the average lost productivity due to victim involvement in the legal process (or property repair). This is also reported in Table 12.

When someone is murdered, all of their future workplace and household productivity is lost. No information was available that would allow us to directly estimate lost productivity to the average murder victim. Instead, the estimated productivity loss per murder victim of $610,000, reported in Table 12, is based on the average productivity loss per firearm-related fatality from Rice et al. (1989), inflated to 1987 dollars and adjusted to the 2.5 percent

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

discount rate used in this study. This estimate includes lost household production. However, lost school days were not included, because losses associated with forgone education are counted in lost wages or lost quality of life.

PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION COSTS

Table 13 summarizes various program administration costs associated with victimization, including health, life, and property insurance and government transfer programs. No cost estimates were available for legal costs associated with lawsuits brought by victims to recover damages.

Health and Life Insurance Claims

Excluding injuries in motor vehicle crashes, approximately 44 percent of the medical costs of injury are covered by private insurance.30 To compute the administrative costs to process medical claims for victim injury, we multiplied this percentage times the medical costs times the ratio of claims to administrative cost for health insurance, .084.31 These estimates may be conservative because it was not possible to determine the percentage of privately reimbursed victims reimbursed by workers' compensation, which carries a higher administrative cost of approximately 13 percent. Approximately 32 percent of costs are covered under public health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid for which

TABLE 13 Health Care Administrative Costs (averaged over all victims), 1987

Offense

Average Long-Term Medical Expensesa

Health Insurance Administrative Costs

Life Insurance Administrative Costs

Disability Payments

Total Administrative Costs

Murder

$2,920

$155

$3,677

$2,013

$5,846

Rape

376

20

0.76

21

Robbery

124

7

0.40

7

Assault

153

8

0.24

8

NOTE: Rape, robbery, and assaults are averaged over all victims, including attempts.

a Excluding premature funerals.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

administrative costs are 5 percent of the cost of health claims (Rice et al., 1989). Table 13 indicates that health insurance administrative costs for victim injuries were $20 for rape, $7 for robbery, $8 for assault, and $155 for murder.32

Life insurance for murder victims also results in administrative costs. We assume that children do not have life insurance coverage and that the average coverage per adult is $47,500. This figure was computed by dividing the average coverage per household from the Bureau of the Census (1989) by the number of adults per household cited in that same source (Miller, 1989b). This estimate may be high if murder victims had disproportionately lower incomes, because the probability of having life insurance and the amount of coverage increase with income. The percentage of murder victims over age 19 was assumed to be 86 percent (Flanagan and Maguire, 1990:Table 3.129). The administrative expense associated with a life insurance claim was estimated to be 9 percent (Miller, 1989b), implying a cost of $3,677 per murder victim.

Income Transfer Programs

According to Rice et al. (1989) about 14 percent of productivity losses (including lost wages and household production) resulting from nonfatal injuries and 10 percent of those resulting from fatal injuries are reimbursed by public disability benefits. Disability payments probably involve roughly the same 5 percent administrative cost as public medical cost reimbursement. The costs are approximately $0.76 per rape, $0.40 per robbery victimization, $0.24 per assault, and $2,013 per murder. This estimate omits the cost of processing sick leave usage and private disability insurance claims.

Property Insurance Claims

Although NCS asks respondents whether property losses were partially covered by insurance, we did not have access to these data. About 70 percent of all homeowners have property insurance (Insurance Information Institute, 1989). Not all of these losses are likely to be recoverable due to insurance deductibles. About 45 percent of all robbery losses amount to less than $100, whereas 35 percent are more than $250 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1989a:76). We assume that 40 percent of all losses are insured and recoverable. The overhead rate for homeowners insurance

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

is 16 percent. Based on these assumptions, the property insurance overhead cost per victim is $1 for rape and assault, and $20 for robbery.

Legal Costs Associated With Tort Claims

Traditionally, victims seldom file legal tort claims for injuries sustained as a result of violent behavior because offenders have few assets to make such suits worthwhile. An exception has been in the case of incidents that occur on third-party premises where there is an allegation of inadequate protection afforded by the third party. These suits often have been directed at businesses such as retail establishments, hotels, and apartment buildings (Carrington, 1978, 1983) and are apparently legally well established in the case of rape (Ballou, 1981).

Sherman and Klein (1984) analyzed tens of thousands of civil tort cases reported from 1958-1982 by the American Trial Lawyers' Association. They found only 186 security-related cases, not all of which involved violent behavior. It should be noted that the Association data set is neither an exhaustive list nor a representative sample of civil tort actions in the United States. Nevertheless, given the several million annual victimizations in the United States, it is clear that few victims sue for damages. There has been some apparent growth over time, however, with about 30 cases per year reported during 1980-1982.

More recently, the number of tort actions brought by victims of rape, sexual assault, or sexual abuse has risen significantly (Jury Verdict Research, 1989). In 1989, Jury Verdict Research, Inc., issued its first handbook devoted solely to such cases. Previously, it was unwilling to make separate estimates for these injuries and instead included them in other, broader categories. Cohen and Miller (1994b) report on nearly 1,000 jury awards to assault victims and 360 awards to rape and sexual assault victims. The median award for assault victims is $59,000, whereas the mean award is $680,000. The median rape or sexual assault award is $430,000, with the mean award being $1.5 million.

Although civil litigation might help compensate some victims, it is not a costless remedy. According to Kakalik and Pace (1986:68-70), legal transaction costs exceeded the total amount of compensation paid through the tort system in 1985. For every $1.00 in compensation awarded to the plaintiff, about $1.13 was spent on legal transaction costs. Moreover, for every $1.00 compensation paid, the plaintiff kept only about 70 cents after paying

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

legal fees and expenses (even less if one includes the value of the plaintiff's time and other expenses such as transportation).33

It is possible that larger cases have relatively lower expense to compensation ratios, because there are no doubt some fixed costs of litigation. However, the estimates above are weighted over all tort cases.

Although we offer no concrete estimates of legal transaction fees per victimization, we can examine the likely magnitude of these costs if we make a few assumptions. For example, if 1 percent of all rape victims sued for damages (about 1,500 suits per year), and their typical award was $400,000, the legal transaction cost per rape victim would be about $4,500 ($400,000 × 1% × 1.13 = $972). If only .01 percent of rape victims sued for damages (150 suits per year), the cost per victim would be about $450. However, we simply do not know the frequency of such lawsuits, and no estimates are included in this paper.

Pain, Suffering, and Quality of Life Costs for Nonfatal Victims

In addition to out-of-pocket expenses, such as lost wages and medical expenses, crime victims endure pain, suffering, and reduced quality of life from their injuries. Although there is a conceptual difference between ''pain and suffering" and "quality of life" costs to victims, the distinction can sometimes become blurred. Pain and suffering is a monetized value of the physical and mental pain endured by the victim due to the injury. Quality of life costs involve the monetization of enjoyable activities that the victim is no longer able to undertake as a result of the injury. For example, a rape victim's pain and suffering might be thought of as the mental and physical damage caused by the rape, whereas the loss in quality of life might be due to activities the victim no longer feels safe undertaking, such as walking in the park.

Although we can conceptualize these differences, it is often difficult to separate them empirically. Willingness to pay (WTP) studies that estimate how consumers value small changes in the risk of death are likely to include expected lost earnings, lost enjoyment of life, plus an evaluation of pain and suffering likely to be endured after an incident but prior to death. Thus, in fatal injuries, WTP is likely to include a complete accounting of nonmonetary damages. Similarly, if a WTP study estimates the value of a change in risk of a nonfatal injury, that should include both pain and suffering and lost quality of life.

However, few WTP studies have estimated nonfatal injuries.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

Instead, researchers have attempted to infer WTP for reduced nonfatal injuries by applying WTP estimates for fatal injuries to ratings of impairment in nonfatal injuries (see discussion of willingness to pay, below). This approach attempts to account for long-term pain and suffering (which would not be present in fatal cases) by including "pain" in the impairment rating scheme and allowing for fates worse than death (Miller et al., 1989a,b).

It may be possible in the future to distinguish these costs by using the compensation approach, as juries generally specify each component of compensation separately (Miller, 1989a:892-893). However, courts are just beginning to recognize "loss of enjoyment" as a distinct category from "pain and suffering." It is not clear whether this distinction will result in increased average awards or whether juries currently include their valuation of lost quality of life when making pain and suffering awards.

In the following discussion, we use the terms pain and suffering and quality of life interchangeably. Further, we do not distinguish between them in making cost estimates. However, we utilize two different estimation techniques—compensation and WTP. The compensation approach follows Cohen (1988a), and the WTP approach follows the basic methodology in Miller et al. (1989a).

In addition to the conceptual differences between WTP and WTA outlined in the first section of this paper, there is an important empirical difference between the estimation approaches used here. The WTP estimates are based on values that workers (or consumers) place on small risks of injury or death, whereas the compensation estimates are based on actual jury awards for identified individuals who were injured. Thus, the WTP estimates are more relevant for policy analysis of programs designed to reduce the risk of intentional injury, whereas the compensation estimates provide some indication of the amount juries believe is required to make victims "whole." Compensation should be higher than WTP.

Evidence Using the Compensation Approach

Following Cohen (1988a), we estimated the average medical cost and lost wages per type of injury, and combined these with jury award data to estimate the monetary value of pain and suffering. However, unlike Cohen (1988a), the present study does not have to rely on worker injury data for average medical and lost wage estimates. Instead, these data are taken directly from the NCS. Thus, different estimates were made for each type of crime

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 14 Estimated Monetary Value of Pain and Suffering, Nonfatal Injuries (averaged over all victims), 1987

Offense

Due to Physical Injurya

Due to Psychological Injurya

Due to Fear of Injurya

Total Range (WTP and compensation)

Rape

$7,400

$36,600

$ 400

$33,300 - 44,400

Robbery

5,100

9,300

1,800

12,150 - 16,200

Assault

4,800

4,250

2,050

8,325 - 11,100

NOTE: Willingness to pay is estimated at 75 percent of compensation amount. Includes attempted rape, robbery, and assault.

a Based on compensation approach.

by type of injury. The first column of Table 14 updates the estimates of pain and suffering caused by physical injuries, using the most recently available data from Jury Verdict Research, Inc.

One could argue that median jury awards are a more appropriate measure of "typical" pain and suffering. Although this argument has some validity, it would not be valid to assume that median jury awards for injuries in personal injury cases (most of which involve motor vehicle crashes) are the same as those caused by criminal victimization. Instead, we want to be able to control for the varying severity of injuries from these disparate causes. Thus, the approach used here is to estimate the functional relationship of "specials" (i.e., the sum of medical costs and lost workdays) to jury awards for pain and suffering. Average medical costs and lost workdays in cases of intentional injury are then used to estimate a pain and suffering award. Thus, the estimates here do not reflect the average jury award. Instead they reflect the average jury award for a specific amount of medical expenses and lost wages. In that sense, they are very much like a "typical" award.

In addition to pain and suffering caused by physical injury, a crime victim might suffer psychological injury. The risks of psychological injury, as well as potential mental health care expenditures and lost workdays, are estimated in Table 4. Based on the estimated potential mental health-related costs per victim, we can estimate the pain and suffering damages that a jury would award.

Psychological injuries were categorized as either "traumatic neurosis" or "severely disabling psychiatric injury" in Cohen (1988a). This was consistent with the classifications used by Jury Verdict

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

Research, Inc. More recent data from Jury Verdict Research, Inc., have similar classifications, with slightly different titles: "emotional distress" and "severely disabling psychological trauma." However, the operational definitions of these categories remain unchanged. Absent better data on actual mental health care costs and lost wages, we rely on the estimation technique used in Cohen (1988a), which yielded the following estimates (in 1987 dollars):

Psychological Injury

Average Medical and Lost Wages

Average Pain and Suffering

Severely disabling psychological trauma

$26,500

$139,961

Emotional distress

6,500

67,495

Fear with weapon present

4,856

Fear without weapon

2,398

The pain and suffering estimate for emotional distress is about $9,000 lower than the estimate in Cohen (1988a). It is unlikely that the average award actually decreased in the past few years. The data we have relied on are admittedly very imperfect, and a 15 percent margin of error is certainly possible. On the other hand, pain and suffering awards for severe psychological injury appeared to have increased—from an average of $97,556 to $139,961.34 Because little is known about the sample sizes or distribution of cases, we have no explanation for this increase. That is, we do not know if this difference is due to one or two "outliers," or if it indicates a significant trend in liability awards. The second column of Table 14 reports the pain and suffering estimate for psychological injury.

For those victims who did not receive any physical or psychological injury, we have estimated a "fear" component of pain and suffering. The monetary value of "fear" is one of the least defensible estimates in Cohen (1988a), because it was based on a few jury award cases in Louisiana, in which the courts recognize the right to recover damages for fear without injury.

The data from Jury Verdict Research, Inc. (1989), now include estimates of "emotional distress as the sole injury," typically where "the plaintiff claimed mental anguish, humiliation, depression, anxiety, and damage to reputation … that was not accompanied by any physical injury. The psychological trauma was minimal and, in most cases, temporary." The average jury award verdict

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

in cases of this sort with little or no "specials" was $29,646. The median award was $6,000. We are reluctant to use these estimates, because they are based on broader categories of mental anguish than just fear. However, the estimates in Cohen (1988a) were lower than this amount—$4,535 with weapon present and $2,240 without. Thus, our estimates seem quite conservative. These estimates (updated to 1987 dollars) are combined with the frequency of each type of crime that results in no physical or emotional injury and appear in the third column of Table 14. It should be noted that the relatively low estimate for rape does not indicate a low level of fear among rape victims. Instead, the relatively low fear estimate reflects the fact that the percentage of rape and attempted rape victims who suffer from neither mental nor physical injury (and thus suffer only from fear) is very low.

The last column of Table 14 summarizes the pain and suffering estimates: $44,400 for rape, $16,200 for robbery, and $11,100 for assault. It is based on the average cost for all victims—whether they were estimated to have pain and suffering or not. The lower values in this column are based on WTP, discussed in the next section.

Evidence Using Willingness to Pay

Since the first study by Acton (1973), there have been scores of WTP studies for changes in the risk of death and, by extension, the statistical value of an anonymous life. We start with an estimated $2.2 million (1987 dollars) as the WTP or "whole life benefits" of preventing loss of an anonymous life (Miller, 1990). Because only a portion of this amount is due to lost enjoyment of life, Miller (1990) also decomposes the $2.2 million estimate into lost productivity, financial security, and quality of life. The quality of life component of the typical death has a value around $1,750,000, with an uncertainty range from $1,050,000 to $2,450,000. It should be noted that this includes the benefits to the person's loved ones.

Of course, since we all must die sometime, what these studies are really measuring is the value of additional life years. With discounting, the nonmonetary quality of life benefit of a reduced risk of death is about $70,000 per year of life and functioning saved.

For nonfatal injuries, we estimated the percentage impairment associated with injuries, based on physician estimates (see Miller et al., 1989a). We computed average years of impairment per

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

injury for three NCS categories of injury that could also be evaluated by using compensation data. The categories were

  1. broken bones and teeth, based on an average of broken leg, forearm, shoulder, and tooth,

  2. head injury resulting in loss of consciousness, and

  3. internal injury.

The impairment years per injury were multiplied by the nonmonetary value of a life year to estimate the nonmonetary benefits of preventing injuries.

Ratings of impairment were not available for rape, attempted rape, knife wounds, or gunshot wounds. To estimate the nonmonetary component of whole life benefits for these injuries, we assumed that the ratio of whole life benefits to compensation (for nonmonetary losses) was constant across injury types. The whole life cost approach yields nonmonetary benefits equal to about 75 percent of the nonmonetary cost estimates from the compensation approach (with an uncertainty range of ±40 percent, meaning that the upper end of the range would exceed the compensation cost estimates). These lower estimates are reported in the last column of Table 14.

RISK OF DEATH

Throughout this paper, we have made separate cost estimates for murder. In many circumstances, murder occurs as the end result of a less severe underlying crime. In these cases, one can estimate the "risk of murder" and place a dollar value on that risk. Presumably, by reducing the underlying crime we also reduce the risk of murder.

According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, there were an estimated 20,100 murders and nonnegligent homicides in 1987 (Jamieson and Flanagan, 1989:427). The FBI compiles further statistics on the circumstances underlying murder. In 1987, there were 17,963 murders for which the FBI received supplemental information. Of those, the circumstances underlying the murder were known in 13,490 cases.35 If we assume that the cases with unknown circumstances have the same distribution as those known, we can estimate the total number of murders caused by various underlying crimes and the WTP per victim to avoid the risk of victim fatality (by assuming $2.2 million per statistical life) to be

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

 

Fatal

Nonfatal

Risk of Death

Value

Rape

305

147,286

0.00207

$4,500

Robbery

2,497

1,068,514

0.00233

5,100

Assault

16,654

4,930,149

0.00337

7,400

Later, when we tally the cost of each victimization type, the risk of death is included as part of the cost of the underlying victimization. However, in calculating the aggregate cost of violent behavior, the risk of death is not included. Otherwise, double counting of murders would result.

QUALITY OF LIFE OF FAMILY MEMBERS OF VICTIM

Family members can be affected by victim injuries in several different ways. First, they may be inconvenienced through increased household chores and attending to the needs of the injured victim during recovery. Second, there may be a psychic cost for "loss of companionship." Finally, family members may suffer actual psychological trauma themselves.

Increased Work Load of Family Members

Conceptually, victimization has two different effects on the household duties of family members: (1) replacement of the victim's household services and (2) attending to the physical needs of the victim. The first type of cost has already been attributed to the victim's losses and is estimated in Table 12. Since we are unaware of any data on attending to the physical needs of the victim, we have not included any related cost estimates here. Note that these costs could be incurred directly by family members through their own labor or through the hiring of outside help.

A related area of research has shown that family caregivers of disabled elderly often "experience physical, emotional and social burden as a result of meeting this responsibility" (Mohide et al., 1988:475). Care of relatives with cognitive deficiencies was more burdensome than care of relatives with physical deficiencies. However, we are unaware of any related studies on crime victims or of studies that would allow us to infer the frequency of these problems in crime victims.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×
Loss of Companionship/Consortium

Although loss of companionship is more likely to occur in death cases, it also may be a concern in cases of severely disabling physical injury and, possibly, in cases of sexual assault and rape. One method of estimating this loss is to examine jury awards for loss of services/consortium. According to 1988 Jury Verdict Research, Inc., data, the median award for catastrophic injury or death to a husband or wife is about $500,000. Median awards for serious injuries (such as fractures, internal injuries, or other injuries with permanent impairment) ranged from $25,000 to $50,000, whereas those for minor injuries range from $5,000 to $10,000.

An alternative approach is to decompose the WTP estimate of the value of a statistical life in order to estimate the nonmonetary component borne by the victim's family. This is done in Miller (1989a:896), where family losses are estimated to be $400,000-$700,000 when an adult is killed, with death of a young child resulting in an even greater loss.

Although the awards to family members in cases of catastrophic injury (including death) are extremely large, it would not necessarily be reasonable to add these to the cost of deaths. Nor would it be reasonable to add family members' mental health-related costs or pain and suffering. We have used a statistical value of life of $2.2 million, which is based primarily on wage rate differentials for risky jobs. Because wage earner's salary is shared by the entire family, to a large extent this value of life estimate represents the loss to the family unit.

Psychological Injury to Family Member

Finally, there might be psychological injury to a family member, especially one who actually witnesses a victimization. Although few studies have tried to assess the long-term mental health consequences to the family of a victim of crime, a good deal of literature describes the mental health effects on spouses and parents of victims of other causes of sudden death. The family's recovery process is apparently much slower when the victim suffered an unexpected death as opposed to being forewarned (e.g., chronic illness).

Lehman et al. (1987) compared a sample of 80 individuals who had lost a spouse or child in a motor vehicle crash from four to seven years earlier, to a matched control group of 80 similar individuals who had not experienced this type of loss, as well as to national norms and a group of female psychiatric outpatients. An

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

additional 20-30 percent of the bereaved group reported depression beyond the rates of the control group.

A more recent survey of 214 family members of homicide victims and 105 randomly sampled nonvictim controls found that 23.4 percent of family members of homicide victims developed homicide related PTSD at some time following the death (Amick et al., 1989; Kilpatrick et al., 1989). However, "in terms of general psychological distress, survivors were no more symptomatic than nonvictim controls." This finding suggests that most family members who did develop PTSD recovered substantially prior to the interview. We do not know the frequency of psychological counseling or treatment. Moreover, we do not know if there are differences in PTSD frequency depending on whether the family member witnessed the victimization, whether the offender was related to the family, etc. (Amick-McMullan et al., 1989).

Pynoos and Eth (1985:20) report on more than 100 child witnesses to the murder of a parent, rape of a mother, or suicidal act of a parent. They found that nearly 80 percent had PTSD. Unfortunately, little is known about the selection process for this sample or if the percentage varies by type of incident.

Pynoos and Eth (1985:21-22) also report that "the Sheriff's Homicide Division of Los Angeles County estimates that dependent children witness between 10 to 20 percent of the approximately 2,000 annual homicides in their jurisdiction." In addition, virtually all of the 50 child homicide witnesses interviewed experienced PTSD (Pynoos and Eth, 1985:29).

Finally, Pynoos and Eth (1985:22) report that a child (or children) directly views a mother being raped in about 10 percent of all rapes reported to the police in Los Angeles County. Nationally, they report that about 40 percent of all rapes occur at home, and that 40 percent of all rape victims are of childbearing age. In addition, they report that a child witnessed or knew about marital rape in 11 percent of these incidents.

Based on the above, it is estimated that 10 percent of the children of homicide victims suffer from PTSD, whereas the rate for spouses and parents of young victims is 20 percent. Of course, to estimate the cost averaged over all victims, one must multiply these rates by the fraction of homicide victims who have children and the fraction who are married. Although we do not have such data, we can make some ballpark estimates based on several assumptions. For example, if we assume that 100 percent of homicides involve victims who either have a child or a spouse, or are youths themselves, and that the ratio of emotional distress to

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

severely disabling injury is 4 to 1, the average homicide involves lost wages, medical costs, and pain and suffering of about $28,000. As the percentage of victims who have dependents decreases, this figure would decrease accordingly. Although a significant consequence for those who are affected, this cost is relatively small in comparison to the $2.2 million value we place on homicide itself. Moreover, because the lost quality of life to family members is partially accounted for in the $2.2 million value of life, we have not included this as a cost element.

In cases of rape, we estimate that 10 percent involve a child witness and that 80 percent of these witnesses experience PTSD. Because we have no evidence on the severity of these PTSD cases, we assume the same ratio of emotional distress to severely disabling injury as for rape cases (i.e., 4 to 1). Thus, over all rape victims, it is assumed that 6.4 percent (10% of rape incidents × 80% PTSD rate × 80% of PTSDs being less severe) involve a child witness who suffers from emotional distress, and 1.6% (10% × 80% × 20%) involve a severely disabling injury to a child witness. Based on jury awards for these psychological injuries, it is estimated that the average rape involves child victim-related losses of about $10,000. Given the sparse evidence we relied on to make this estimate, it should be considered tentative at best. The important point, however, is that it appears this is not a trivial cost relative to the other costs of rape.

Family member injury is likely to occur in other situations of violent behavior, particularly incidents involving domestic violence. Examples of likely psychological trauma include children witnessing spouse or child abuse, and spouses who must deal with child abuse by the other spouse. Further research in this area no doubt would be of interest.

Except in the case of rape (where we assume a $10,000 loss per incident), we have not included separate quality of life estimates for family members.

PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA TO WITNESSES OF VIOLENT BEHAVIOR

In addition to family members, other witnesses of violent behavior might suffer from psychological trauma—especially in cases of severe injury or death. According to NCS data, 69 percent of all violent crimes were witnessed by more than one person—either other victims, family members, or bystanders (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1989e:4). Unfortunately, we do not know the percentage in each witness category.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

Although little research has been done specifically on the psychological effects of witnessing a violent act, both transitory fear and more severe PTSD are possible outcomes in some instances. Since we have no estimates of the frequency of such injury, no cost estimates are included here. However, if frequency estimates were made, the psychological trauma costs mentioned in the earlier section on family members could be applied.

INJURIES CAUSED BY EARLIER VICTIMS

For more than 25 years, social science literature has posited that family violence, such as spousal assault and child abuse, promotes additional violence directed intergenerationally within families or externally toward society in general. This ''cycle of violence" is difficult to quantify. A recent review of the literature noted that "our knowledge of the long-term consequences of abusive home environments remains limited" (Widom, 1989:252).

A recent study by Widom (1989) compared a group of adults with documented histories of being abused or neglected to a control group. Abused and neglected subjects were more likely to have an adult criminal record and a substantially higher rate of arrest for violent offenses than the matched control group. Despite these findings, the relationship between childhood victimization and adult criminality is not inevitable: 29 percent of abused and neglected subjects evidenced adult criminal records; however, 71 percent did not. Consequently, Widom suggests that reassessment of the cycle of violence hypothesis is needed to develop more complex and comprehensive models of the relationship.

To the extent that child abuse causes later violent behavior by former victims, the costs of the later violence stem from the earlier violence and should be attributed to it. Proper attribution would make it clear that prevention of the initial victimization will pay extra dividends through reduced future victimization. Unfortunately, we were unable to assemble enough reliable data to take this approach.

COST OF SOCIETY'S RESPONSE TO VIOLENT BEHAVIOR

This section details the costs associated with society's response to violent behavior. Some of these costs are incurred by society in an effort to deter and punish offenders (e.g., criminal justice costs); others are designed to prevent victimization (such as precautionary

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

expenditures by potential victims). Finally, some costs such as "fear" are by-products of the actual victimization and are not related to efforts to reduce crime.

Because most criminal justice statistics refer solely to aggravated assaults, the cost estimates developed in this section do not include simple assaults.

PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES AND FEAR OF CRIME

Individuals and firms take many precautionary measures to reduce their likelihood of becoming crime victims. In some cases, these precautions involve monetary expenditures for such items as handguns, security systems, and private guards. However, many of these precautions involve more subtle costs, such as taking fewer walks at night.

Monetary Expenditures for Crime Prevention

According to a 1985 poll, 42 percent of all households own at least one "gun or revolver," and 20 percent of those respondents claim they own their firearms "mainly for protection reasons" (Bergan, 1985). Thus, about 8.4 percent of all households (42% × 20%) own firearms primarily for protection. Following Zedlewski (1985), based on 89.5 million households and an average cost of $75 per firearm, this amounts to $564 million spent on protective firearms. However, because a portion of these expenditures would have to be apportioned to the prevention of household burglary, we cannot attribute all of these costs to violent crime.

The last known estimate of private security costs for commercial and government establishments was $21.7 billion in 1980 (Cunningham and Taylor, 1985:14). In 1987 dollars, this would be about $30 billion. Once again, it is impossible to allocate these expenditures to protection against violent crime (such as armed robbery), as opposed to those designed to control employee theft and shoplifting. We are also unaware of any estimates of private residential security expenditures.

Zedlewski (1985:774) includes an estimate of the annual cost of maintaining guard dogs. Updating his estimates to 1987 dollars (and number of households) yields an annual expenditure estimate of $5.1 billion. In addition to the problem of allocating these costs between violent and nonviolent crimes, to the extent that owners derive pleasure from these pets, it would not be correct to allocate the full cost to protection.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

Although some precautionary expenditures or steps can be measured, others are more subtle. For example, Sherman (1989) argues that high crime rates (particularly for armed robberies) and the high cost of security have diminished the number of small neighborhood businesses. This has an impact on employment opportunities in the inner cities, as well as decreasing the quality of life for those who live nearby and have to travel further for goods and services.

Crime Prevention Behavior

According to a recent Gallup Poll, 43 percent of the American people live within a mile of an area where they are "afraid to walk alone at night," and 10 percent say they do not feel "safe and secure" at home at night (Gallup, 1989:8). People who fear being crime victims are likely to change their behavior. They might take fewer walks at night, buy more expensive locks and security systems, etc. These are preventive measures designed to reduce the likelihood of victimization by reducing exposure to risky situations.

A survey of households in Washington, D.C., in 1971 (Clotfelter, 1977:502), found the following reported rates (percent) of self-protective behavior:

Usually locked house when at home

84.9

Usually left lights on when away

65.8

Ever stayed home at night because of crime

43.8

Installed additional locks

42.7

Ever took taxis because of crime

28.6

Carried something for protection

15.0

Obtained watchdog

12.4

Put bars on windows

5.9

Installed burglar alarm

2.7

Other studies and examples of protective behavior are cited in Clarke (1983). However, we are unaware of any attempts to place monetary values on these behavioral changes. Clotfelter and Seeley (1979:222-224) conceptualize the cost of modified behavior in terms of the opportunity cost of increased social contact or activity. In theory, many of these behavioral changes could be valued if one were to conduct an in-depth study. For example, a contingent valuation survey might elicit the value to homeowners of being able to walk outdoors at night. More detailed interviews could

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

also help elicit quantitative information that might be used to measure out-of-pocket costs, such as the cost of additional taxi rides, additional electricity usage for increased lighting, or alarm installation and monitoring.

Fear of Crime

Potential victims will continue to purchase security devices and change their behavior until the marginal costs of these precautionary measures just equal the perceived marginal benefits in terms of reduced crime risk. Thus, at some point, it becomes "rational" to accept fear instead of spending more resources trying to reduce that fear.

Interestingly, many studies suggest that fear is negatively related to the risk of victimization. For example, "elderly women, who are most afraid, are the least frequently victimized. Young men, who are least afraid, are most often victimized" (Moore and Trojanowicz, 1988:3; see also Skogan, 1986; Skogan and Maxfield, 1981). Nonetheless, this fear is a social cost, because people who are afraid of victimization would be willing to pay to reduce that fear. Moreover, this phenomenon is actually quite consistent with rational behavior. We may observe low victimization rates among groups that are most fearful precisely because these are highly vulnerable groups that have taken preventive measures to reduce their exposure to potential victimization (Cook, 1986:6-8; Balkin, 1979:345). To date, there have been few attempts to place a dollar value on the fear of crime. Conceptually, one could use the hedonic pricing technique to estimate property value differences based on the risk of crime. However, data limitations make it very unlikely that one could isolate the fear component of housing price differentials, much less the fear of each individual crime type. One would need to have data on housing prices, crime rates, and security expenditures that are likely to be capitalized into the housing price itself. An alternative approach might be to apply the contingent valuation survey approach, discussed earlier.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM COSTS

Total criminal justice expenditures for 1986 were reported to be $53.5 billion (Jamieson and Flanagan, 1989:2), allocated as follows:

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

Police protection

$26.25 billion

Judicial and legal

11.50 billion

Corrections

15.75 billion

Total

53.50 billion

The bulk of these expenditures (56 percent) were made at the local level, whereas states spent 32 percent and the federal government only 12 percent.

For purposes of this study, the above estimates are virtually useless. Police protection encompasses many types of duties related to law and order, including traffic safety. Even the "criminal justice" component of police protection involves a significant amount of nonviolent crime. The same problem exists for the other two cost categories. A more appropriate method of estimating criminal justice-related costs would be to estimate the cost of each stage of the process and apply these estimates to individual crime types. This disaggregated approach is attempted below.

Investigation, Prosecution, and Court-Related Costs

There are numerous stages of the criminal justice system, including police investigation, prosecution, court costs, and pretrial detention. We are unaware of any previous studies that estimate costs systemwide. Instead, previous cost studies have generally focused on one stage of the process in one city (Weller and Block, 1979; Toborg, 1981; Chabotar, 1987:11).

In 1979, the Administrative Office of the Courts conducted a study of the amount of time spent by federal district court judges on each type of case (Flanders, 1980). These estimates include court time, as well as time spent by judges in conferences, research, etc. They are averaged over all cases in that category—whether they resulted in a guilty plea, dismissal, or trial.36 To convert hours into dollars, several assumptions must be made. As a lower bound, we could multiply the time spent by the average salary of state general trial judges, currently $68,935 per year (Jamieson and Flanagan, 1989:109). However, this ignores all other court-related costs. Another item that can be added is the average cost of filing a case in court, estimated to be $124 (Judicial Conference, 1989). This can be added to judicial wage costs to arrive at a lower bound. As an upper-bound estimate, we have used the estimated cost for state court time, about $4 per minute in 1982 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988d:123). Table 15 summarizes these estimated ranges for judicial costs per arrested offender.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 15 Estimated Costs of Court-Related Time per Arrested Offender, 1987

Offense

Hours of Judicial Time

Minimum Cost (judge's wages plus filing costs)

Maximum Cost (assumes 100% court time)

Homicide

13.2

$550

$3,700

Rape

7.3

350

2,075

Robbery

5.1

300

1,450

Assault

3.7

250

1,050

 

SOURCE: Hours taken from Flanders (1980).

One of the most comprehensive criminal justice tracking systems is employed by the Metropolitan Dade (Metro-Dade) County Department of Justice Assistance in Florida. They collect data from about 40 different local agencies to determine the cost of each stage of the process—from police investigation through final disposition.37Table 16 computes the average cost of each stage of the criminal justice process for Metro-Dade in 1987.

These estimates include all adult felonies—both Part I offenses and drug-related crimes. Thus, we can estimate only the average cost for all felonies, by each stage of the process. However, we do know how many of each crime type entered each stage of the process.

Table 17 combines these estimates with the proportion of murder (and manslaughter), rape, robbery, and aggravated assault cases that reach the same stage. It also includes an estimate for "other felonies" (which includes child and sexual abuse cases). The estimates in Table 17 are per case known to police rather than per case reported in the NCS.

Because offenders "drop out" at various stages of the criminal justice system, we need estimates of the percentage of total offenses that involve each stage of the process. One of the problems with estimating these drop-out rates is that estimates of total victimization come from the NCS, whereas the number of investigations and arrests comes from the Uniform Crime Reports. These sources often have different crime definitions. For example, the NCS includes only households, whereas UCR includes crimes against business. However, since this study excludes property crimes, the difference between the two surveys is of somewhat less importance. In theory, the main problem would

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 16 Average Cost Per Criminal Justice Processing Stage, Metropolitan Dade County, 1987

States

Aggregate Cost

Number of Cases

Average Cost per Case

Investigation and arrest

$94,153,376

$200,000

$ 477

Booking

7,713,658

41,572

186

Pretrial jail

34,987,532

33,958

1,030

Screening and prefiling process

4,853,614

45,687

106

Arraignment

15,694,845

42,629

368

Pretrial hearings

26,071,280

20,977

1,243

Trial

17,294,310

573

30,182

Sentencing

5,615,097

15,925

353

Posttrial jail

14,431,618

3,831

3,767

Conditional release

8,734,319

9,541

915

 

SOURCE: Metropolitan Dade County Department of Justice Assistance, Dade Justice Improvement Model.

TABLE 17 Average Criminal Justice Cost per Crime Known to Police, Metropolitan Dade County, 1987

Crime

Average Cost

Murder/homicide

$5,925

Rape

2,050

Robbery

1,125

Aggravated assault

1,225

Other felonies (excluding drug-related)

3,325

NOTE: Costs of each stage of the process (Table 16) are not estimated on a crime-specific basis; they are averaged over all crimes. However, the percentage of offenses that reach each stage is based on crime-specific data.

appear to be in the case of robbery—where the UCR presumably includes many business crimes.

Table 18 illustrates two methods of estimating the percentage of crimes reported to police. The first column lists the percentage of victims in the National Crime Survey who claim they reported the incident to the police (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1989a:80). The second column shows the number of estimated crimes, also taken from NCS data (except homicide, which was provided by

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 18 Percentage of Victimizations Reported to Police, 1987

Offense

From NCS (%)

Number of Total Victims (NCS)

Number of Known to Police (UCR)

Implied by UCR/NCS (%)

Homicide

20,100

18,430

91.7

Rape

53.2

147,286

81,980

55.7

Robbery

56.1

1,068,514

474,713

44.4

Assault

46.4

4,930,149

Aggravated

59.6

1,631,673

778,889

47.7

Simple

39.5

3,298,476

the FBI). The third column is the number of offenses known to police from the UCR (as reported in Jamieson and Flanagan, 1989:510). The last column computes the implied rate of reporting by comparing columns 2 and 3. The two estimates are fairly close for rape. For robbery, we would expect the reporting rates implied by comparing NCS to UCR data to be higher than that in the NCS itself, because business crimes are included in UCR. However, the opposite appears to be true. Since we need to use UCR data on the percentage cleared by arrest, we are using the last column of Table 18 to estimate the percentage of robberies reported to police. The UCR data do not include simple assaults, which apparently have a lower reporting rate. Thus, we have used the lower NCS estimate of 39.5 percent for simple assaults.

Based on Table 18 and estimates of the "clearance" rate by arrest and the final disposition of the case, we can estimate the percentage of victimizations that eventually lead to each stage of the criminal justice process. This is done in Table 19.

Combining the criminal justice processing costs per offense known to police from Table 17 with the estimate of offenses reported to police from Table 18 yields an estimated criminal justice processing cost per offense, shown in Table 20. Processing costs are estimated to be $5,750 for murder, $1,150 per rape, and $500 each for robbery and assault. These estimates are averaged over all offenses (including attempts), even those not reported to police.

Legal Fees Associated With Criminal Justice System

In 1986, an estimated $991 million was spent by all levels of government on indigent defense, whereas the average cost per

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 19 Percentage of Victimizations Disposed of at Each Stage of Criminal Justice System

Offense

NCS Estimatea

Reported to Policeb

Cleared by Arrestc

Dismissedd

Guilty Pleasd

Guilty Verdictsd

Acquittald

Homicide

20,100

97.1%

67.9%

18.5%

28.2%

16.4%

4.7%

Rape

147,286

55.7

29.5

12.3

13.8

2.4

1.1

Robbery

1,068,514

44.4

11.8

4.9

6.0

0.7

0.2

Assault

4,930,149

42.2

24.9

12.2

11.6

0.7

0.4

Aggravated

1,631,673

47.7

28.1

13.7

13.1

0.8

0.4

Simple

3,298,476

39.5

23.3

11.4

10.9

0.6

0.4

a From the National Crime Survey, except homicide, which is the number of murders and nonnegligent homicides from the Uniform Crime Report, as reported in Jamieson and Flanagan (1989:427). It should be noted that the homicide estimate is higher than the number of homicides known to police—it is the FBI's reported estimates.

b Taken from Table 18; see text.

c Column 2 multiplied by percentage of offenses known to police that are cleared by arrest, from the Uniform Crime Report, as reported in Jamieson and Flanagan (1989:510). Note that because no clearance rate is available for simple assaults, it is assumed to be the same for as aggravated assault.

d Column 3, the fraction cleared by arrest, multiplied by the estimated fraction of arrests resulting in each type of plea in six jurisdictions in 1986, from Boland et al. (1989). Note that the estimates in Boland et al. (1989) refer only to felony convictions. Because no comparable estimates are available for simple assaults, they were assumed to have the same disposition as aggravated assaults.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 20 Criminal Justice Processing Costs per Criminal Offense, 1987

Offense

Cost per Offense Reported to Police (Table 17)

Percentage Reported to Police (Table 18)

Cost per Offense

Murder/manslaughter

$5,925

91.7

$5,430

Rape

2,050

55.7

1,150

Robbery

1,125

44.4

500

Assaulta

1,225

47.7

580

a Based on costs for all felony cases and the processing stages for aggravated assault (no estimates available for simple assaults).

case was about $230 in 1987 dollars (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988c:4-5). Although no published crime-specific estimates are available, we can estimate the cost by crime type, based on a few additional pieces of information. From Table 15, we estimate the weighted average time spent by judges per case to be 4.05 hours. This implies an average cost of indigent defense of $57 per hour of judicial time.

Spangenberg et al. (1986:33) reported that 48 percent of all felony cases require indigent defense. No estimates are available on the cost to defendants who hire their own legal counsel. However, given the relatively low fees paid for indigent defense, privately funded legal defense costs are likely to be higher. Absent other data, we assume that the private cost per case is the same as the indigent defense cost estimated above.

Assuming that indigent defense time is proportional to judicial time and that the cost of private defense is the same as indigent defense, we can estimate the average cost per case, as shown in Table 21.

Cost of Sanctions

Convicted offenders are subject to a variety of sanctions such as jail or prison, probation, community service, and fines. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (1989c), incarceration is imposed in 95 percent of murder, 75 percent of rape, 76 percent of robbery, and 45 percent of aggravated assault convictions. Expected time served in prison for newly incarcerated offenders and

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 21 Cost of Legal Defense per Case Filed in Court, 1987

Offense

Hours Spent on Case

Indigent Defense ($57/hour)

Percent Arrested (Table 19)

Cost per Incident

Homicide

13.2

$750

67.9

$500

Rape

7.3

415

29.5

125

Robbery

5.1

290

11.8

35

Aggravated assault

3.7

212

28.1

60

NOTE: Of these costs, 48 percent are borne by governments through indigent defense programs. The remaining 52 percent are paid for by the offender.

actual time served in jail for recently released prisoners are available from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (1989c, 1988f). However, no estimates are available for the average time served for persons sentenced to life in prison. Because the median age of prisoners convicted of violent crimes is 28 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988b), a full life term could average 40 years or more. However, parole is generally granted in life sentences—usually after 20 years or less. Absent better data, we assume that the average life sentence results in 20 years in prison.

Table 22 computes the average time served by type of offense. The first column shows the average time served per convicted offender—including those who receive no jail time. The second column is the percentage of offenses that result in convicted offenders (taken from Table 19). The third column is thus the average time served per offense—the ''expected" time served for all offenders. The last column compares these estimates to a recent study by Kleiman et al. (1989) of "imprisonment-to-offense ratios," which were computed by comparing prison populations to the number of offenses committed. These two methods yield very similar results for murder and robbery. However, Kleiman et al. estimates are considerably lower for aggravated assault and rape. Although we cannot reconcile the two estimates, one possible explanation is that the imprisonment-to-offense ratio tends to underestimate the true time served in periods of rising prison populations (Kleiman et al., 1989:7). For this paper, the time served per offense estimates are used instead.

The cost of incarceration varies widely by type of facility and by state (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988d:123). The distribution of state facilities is about 44 percent maximum security, 44 percent medium security, and 12 percent minimum security (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1987:6). Since we do not know the distribution

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 22 Estimated Time Served by Convicted Felons (days)

Offense

Time Served per Convicted Offender

Percentage of Offenders Convicted (Table 19)

Time Served per Offense

"Imprisonment-to-Offense Ratio" (Kleiman et al., 1989)

Murder

3,496

44.6

1,559

1,278

Rape

1,812

16.2

293

117

Robbery

1,447

6.7

97

115

Aggravated assault

644

13.9

90

31

of security levels for incarcerated offenders by type of crime, it is assumed to be the same for all offenders. The average annual operating costs (updated to 1987 dollars) were $12,300 for a state prisoner and $10,650 for a jail inmate (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988d). The American Correctional Association estimates the annual cost of incarceration to be about $41 per day or $15,000 per year (Zedlewski, 1985). A recent report on a privately operated minimum to medium security facilities estimated the daily cost of incarceration at about $25 per day (National Institute of Justice, 1989c). For this paper, we assume the daily cost of incarceration to be $35 per day (about $12,500 per year).

In 1987, about 82 percent of the offenders released from prison received some form of supervision, such as parole (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988g). We assume that the average release is supervised for two years, at an annual cost of $740 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988d).

The percentage of convicted offenders sentenced to probation is also available by type of crime (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1989c). The annual cost of probation is estimated to be $625 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988d). We assume that the average length of probation is three years.

The death penalty is imposed in about 2 percent of murder convictions (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1989c). Although we do not know how many death penalties were imposed for other offenses, there has not been an execution in the United States for an offense other than murder since 1967 (Jamieson and Flanagan, 1989:672). Thus, we assume that the only death penalty sentences are for cases of murder.

The cost of imposing the death penalty is quite high when the entire legal process is taken into account. Estimates of the cost per death penalty case vary considerably from state to state, from

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 23 Estimated Cost of Imposing Sanctions per Offense, 1987

Offense

Prison or Jail

Parole or Probation After Release

Probation Only

Death Penalty

Total

Murder

$47,700

$450

$ 70

$26,750a

$74,970

Rape

5,100

140

180

5,420

Robbery

3,400

60

220

3,680

Aggravated assault

3,150

110

475

3,735

a Includes the entire criminal justice processing cost of imposing the death penalty.

$1.4 million in New York and $3.0 million in Florida (Spangenberg and Walsh, 1989:56), to as high as $15 million in California (Tabak, 1989:136). If the average cost per conviction is assumed to be $3 million, the cost per murder (after discounting for those not involving a conviction) is $26,750.

Table 23 summarizes the above estimates. The cost of sanctions per offense is estimated to be $74,970 for murder, $5,420 for rape, $3,680 for robbery, and $3,735 for aggravated assault. These are average costs based on current levels of conviction and incarceration—including offenses that do not lead to prosecution or conviction.

Alternatives to incarceration such as intensive probation (National Institute of Justice, 1987) and home detention (National Institute of Justice, 1989a; Hofer and Meierhoefer, 1987) are less costly than prison. For example, the average probationer in Georgia's intensive probation program costs the state $6,775 less than comparable incarcerated offenders (National Institute of Justice, 1987). Because most of these programs are still rather small, we have not estimated their costs here. To the extent that they replace incarceration, the average cost per offense will be reduced. Of course, one must also account for any increase (or decrease) in crime rates caused by the alternative sanction program.

Victim and Witness Interaction With Criminal Justice System

One cost that has received little or no attention in the literature on crime costs is the amount of time spent by victims and witnesses with police and the criminal justice system. In some cases, this might involve no more than a few minutes being interviewed

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

by a police investigator. At the other extreme, it might involve police lineups to identify suspects or even several days in court testifying before a grand jury and as a prosecution witness.

Roughly half of all violent crimes are reported to police. After initial contact with the police, 16-33 percent of victims reported later contact, including personal visits, telephone conversations and correspondence; 11-20 percent reported contact with other authorities; and 10-13 percent with victim assistance programs (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1989a; Whitaker, 1989). However, we do not know the amount of time spent at each stage of the process.

Some of these costs were included in Table 12, which reported on an NCS estimate of lost workdays due either to victim involvement in the legal process or to the need to repair or replace property. Those estimates per offense were quite small. We know of no estimates of the number of witnesses per case or of the time spent by witnesses at various stages of the legal process.

OTHER NONCRIMINAL JUSTICE PROGRAMS

In addition to the criminal justice system's response to criminal activity and precautionary expenditures by potential victims, a host of social and neighborhood programs are intended partially to reduce the exposure to victimization (demand) or the propensity of people to commit offenses (supply).

On the supply side, one possibility is to rehabilitate known offenders. However, few such programs have been successful (Sechrest et al., 1979). The few programs that have proven successful have been "designed to improve labor market performance or to ensure a supportive family-type environment" (Witte, 1989:5).

Instead of targeting offenders, some evidence suggests that "habilitation" of high-risk groups is more successful than rehabilitation of known offenders. Early intervention programs with high-risk groups (e.g., Head Start and the Job Corps) have been shown to reduce criminal behavior (Witte, 1989:6). Some feel that programs designed to educate students about our legal system and values might have beneficial effects on reducing violence (Donahue, 1990). Because these programs all have multiple goals, their costs should not be entirely apportioned to the prevention of crime, yet alone violent behavior. In addition, more research is needed to determine the long-term effects of these programs.

Other programs have been designed to reduce the "demand"

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

side of victimization, by reducing the exposure of certain neighborhoods or groups. About 600 U.S. cities have adopted "crime stoppers"-type programs, where rewards are offered for anonymous tips leading to the arrest and conviction of criminals (Rosenbaum et al., 1987). Although we do not know of any estimates of the cost of these programs, we can identify the cost categories to be (1) time spent by law enforcement officers, (2) media time and space donated to the project, and (3) volunteer time by board members and other workers. Although no data exist on the resources devoted to these programs, one survey found that 80 percent of the programs have "an active board of directors that meets once a month" (Rosenbaum et al., 1987:31). Of course, the crime stoppers program is designed to deal with all types of crimes. An estimated 16 percent of the tips received deal with personal crimes such as rape, robbery, assault, and homicide (Rosenbaum et al., 1987:30).

Many neighborhoods have established "neighborhood watch" programs where volunteers engage in various crime prevention activities. One national survey "found that over 90 percent of police and sheriffs' departments had established formal crime prevention programs such as Neighborhood Watch. In California, over 5,000 such programs serve 85 percent of the State's population." (Cunningham and Taylor, 1985:2). A recent survey sent questionnaires to 2,300 neighborhood watch programs around the country (Garofalo and McLeod, 1988). Although there are no data on the number of hours spent by volunteers or the dollar expenditures, the study found that many of these programs involve the expenditure of funds on projects such as emergency telephones, street lighting improvements, and hired guards.

INCARCERATED OFFENDER COSTS

In addition to paying for the cost of incarceration, society loses the productive capacity of individuals who are incarcerated. These productivity losses are true social costs that should be taken into account when examining the costs and benefits of incarceration. Some would argue that the value of lost freedom to the offender should also be considered (Becker, 1968:179-180).

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (1988b), 31 percent of all state prisoners were unemployed at the time of their incarceration; the corresponding estimate for jail inmates is 46.7 percent (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1985). Weighted by population estimates, approximately 37 percent of all inmates were unemployed

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

prior to their offense.38 Unfortunately, no published estimates are available on the distribution of employment or earnings by offense type. It is possible, for example, that property offenders are more likely to have been unemployed than violent offenders.

Few published reports document the earnings of offenders prior to incarceration. A 1978 study of jail inmates (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1980) found the median income to be $6,750 (in 1987 dollars). A study of state prison inmates in 1986 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988b) reported on the distribution of income prior to arrest. If we annualize the earnings of those who were incarcerated for part of the year prior to their most recent incarceration, the average state prison inmate was earning an estimated $8,800 in 1987 dollars.

Only a part of this income could be considered lost productivity due to incarceration. For example, the 1983 survey of local jail inmates found that only about 60 percent of inmates' main source of income came from wages (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988b:Table 2). About 24 percent of the inmates received social security, unemployment, welfare, or an educational scholarship as their main source of income. The remaining 16 percent received income from family members, illegal sources, or "other" unspecified sources.

Although we do not know how income was distributed across these various sources, if we assume it was evenly distributed, the average incarcerated offender costs society about $5,285 in lost productivity per year of incarceration. Combining this estimate with the average time served per offense from Table 22 yields the following lost productivity estimates:

Murder

$22,600

Rape

4,200

Robbery

1,400

Aggravated assault

1,300

Not only is there no consensus on whether society should be "concerned" about the lost freedom to offenders, there are virtually no estimates of the value of lost freedom. In theory, one might be able to estimate the trade-off between fines and imprisonment by examining the rate of offenses in jurisdictions with different levels of fines and imprisonment (Posner, 1980:413). However, we are unaware of any such studies. Moreover, it is not obvious that sufficiently rich data exist to undertake such a study.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

One possible measure of the value of lost freedom would be jury awards for false imprisonment. Although false imprisonment data are not available, according to Jury Verdict Research, Inc., the mean award for false arrest by police is $85,000, with the median being $60,000.

In addition to the freedom lost by imprisonment, convicted felons are denied many civil rights such as voting, juror service, public employment, and firearm ownership (Burton et al., 1987).

One potential social cost of incarceration is the disruption of lives for the family of an offender. Incarceration no doubt places a financial and emotional burden on the remaining spouse and children. To some extent, these are "innocent victims" of the offense as well. Although few studies exist on the impact of incarceration on family members of the offender, only about 20 percent of all jail and state prison inmates are reported married at the time of their incarceration (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1980, 1988b). On the other hand, more than 40 percent are reported to have dependents.

It is also possible that sending offenders to jail will "train" them to become more hardened criminals (Irwin and Austin, 1987:17). To the extent that this is true, society incurs an additional cost associated with increased future criminal activity. This is a particularly difficult proposition to test empirically, because we generally do not permit randomized experiments in such criminal justice settings. One study of probation versus prison suggests that prisoners have a slightly higher recidivism rate than similar probationers but concludes that "the results presented here are only suggestive and should not be used to support specific policy recommendations" (Petersilia and Turner, 1986:iii).

Finally, one potential cost associated with jailing offenders is the higher rate of injury and death in prison. In 1987, the average state and federal prison population, plus local jail population, was about 847,000 (Jamieson and Flanagan, 1989:605, 612). During the same year, the total number of suicides in these institutions was 498, a rate of 0.00059. This compares to a nationwide suicide rate of about 0.0002 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988d:24). Another 339 deaths in state and federal correctional facilities were caused either by "another" person or by an "unspecified" cause (Jamieson and Flanagan, 1989:662). Based on a total prison population of about 557,000, this death rate is about 0.00061, compared to a nationwide homicide rate of about 0.0001.

However, one cannot simply compare suicide and murder rates in prisons to those outside without controlling for the background

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

level of suicide and murder for incarcerated individuals. For example, both the suicide and the homicide rates are significantly higher for males aged 18 to 44 (and particularly those between 25 and 34), which are also the groups with the highest criminal participation rates. Although we are unaware of studies directed specifically at these issues, Gaes (1985) reviews existing literature on the effect of overcrowding on prison illness and violence. However, without further study, we cannot conclude that jailed offenders have a higher rate of injury or death than their nonjailed cohorts.

COST OF "OVERDETERRENCE"

Overdeterrence might affect either those who commit an offense or those who are completely innocent. In the case of those who commit an offense, the concept is generally applied to nonviolent offenses, where the benefit to the offender exceeds the cost to society. For example, we would not want to impose so severe a penalty on double parking that a woman about to give birth parks three blocks away from a hospital to avoid the penalty (if that was the only spot available). Similarly, we might not want to deter a person from cheating on his income taxes if that is the only viable way for him to afford the medical expenses needed to save his wife's life (Shavell, 1985).

It is also possible to overdeter violent offenses. For example, if we imposed a mandatory death penalty for rape, those few individuals who are still not deterred might choose to kill their victims to reduce the probability of detection (because the penalties for rape and murder would be identical). As a second example, the increased sophistication of forensic technology might cause violent offenders to resort to arson to cover up any possible identifying evidence. The concern here is that there is adequate "marginal deterrence" to keep offenders from escalating the violence and harm caused by the crime they commit (Stigler, 1970).

Overdeterrence costs are also imposed on innocent people. In some cases, a criminal defendant may be falsely accused of committing a crime. Even if eventually found not guilty, the person accused of the crime may bear significant psychological and reputational costs. If found guilty and incarcerated, the costs obviously escalate. Moreover, there are few social benefits from false convictions. For example, convicting a mentally incompetent offender has little deterrent value.

We are unaware of any studies that specifically quantify the extent of false imprisonments or accusations. It has been reported,

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

however, that between 5 and 8 percent of all child sexual abuse allegations are false (Blodget, 1987). One way to estimate the monetary cost of a false accusation would be to use jury award data on false arrests. As mentioned earlier, the mean award for false arrest by police is $84,987, with the median being $60,000. This does not include the cost associated with false imprisonment.

In addition to the cost imposed on the innocent party accused of wrongdoing, a related cost is imposed on all innocent people who might potentially be accused in the future. These individuals might take costly actions or change their behavior in some manner to avoid being falsely accused of committing a crime. For example, it is possible that the risk of being falsely accused of child abuse will cause some legitimate day care providers to close down and will reduce the attractiveness of this line of work for potential new entrants, thereby raising the cost of day care. Although we would like to think this is not a significant problem given the high legal standards of proof in criminal cases, there is a growing concern over this problem in the case of child sexual abuse. Indeed, there have been reports of day care centers closing due to the inability to obtain insurance against child abuse claims (Wickenden, 1985). This problem is less likely to occur in cases of injury normally associated with "street crime."

COST OF "JUSTICE"

There are two types of costs associated with justice. First, the extensive constitutional protection afforded accused defendants may be thought of as imposing a justice cost. In many ways, this can be thought of as the opposite of the overdeterrence cost mentioned above, because these provisions are designed primarily to protect innocent parties from being falsely accused.

Second, one can often identify less expensive ways of accomplishing current levels of crime control that our society would still not prefer on grounds of justice. For example, in theory, one could considerably reduce police resources and catch fewer criminals, while at the same time imposing much more severe penalties on those few criminals who are caught (Polinsky and Shavell, 1979). To the extent society deems this unacceptable, it could be considered a cost of justice. Although we have no method of estimating the costs of justice, these costs are implicitly included in the cost of the criminal justice system estimated elsewhere in this paper.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

OFFENDER COSTS

In an earlier section, we discuss the cost of sanctioning offenders, which includes the lost productivity and freedom of the offender, as well as potential costs to the offender's family. However, even if an offender is not held accountable for his or her actions, considerable time and resources may have been devoted to committing an act of violence. These costs are best thought of as the opportunity costs associated with criminal activity. Although the primary cost is likely to be lost productivity for offenders who would otherwise be engaged in legal and gainful employment, an additional cost might include the purchase of products to assist in the criminal activity (e.g., firearms).

One question of concern to many researchers is the extent to which crime and work are substitutes in the minds of potential offenders. The underlying hypothesis has been that if we increase job opportunities for the poor, crime will be reduced. Although we have not extensively surveyed the literature, it appears that this issue is still unsettled. For example, Cook and Zarkin (1985) find that burglaries and robberies increase somewhat with the unemployment rate, whereas motor vehicle thefts actually decrease. Witte et al. (1989) find that individual participation in crime is negatively related to both work and school. They also cite other studies that find wage rates do not appear to affect levels of criminal activity and that "a legitimate use for time (school or work) rather than income is most strongly associated with lower levels of criminal activity" (Witte et al., 1989:18). They interpret these findings to suggest that most people view crime as an inferior alternative to work, and that people who are inclined to go to school and work are inherently less likely to commit crime.

As noted above, about 37 percent of incarcerated offenders were unemployed prior to their conviction. Of coùrse, judges may partially select candidates for incarceration based on prior history. Thus, the true unemployment rate of violent offenders may be considerably less.

SUMMARY OF COST ESTIMATES

This section combines all of the previous cost estimates and presents aggregate estimates per crime. It should be noted that all of the estimates are in 1987 dollars. To increase to 1994 dollars, these estimates should be increased by approximately 25-30

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

percent. Table 24 summarizes the victim-related cost estimates in this paper. It is based on the WTP approach to valuing reduced quality of life. The average victim-related cost of rape (including attempted rape) is estimated to be $54,100 (in 1987 dollars). The average robbery or attempted robbery cost $19,200, whereas the average assault or attempted assault (including simple and aggravated) cost $16,500. (If compensation estimates are used for valuing reduced quality of life in nonfatal injuries, the estimates increase to $65,200 for rape, $23,200 for robbery, and $19,300 for assault.) As noted in Table 24, many costs are excluded due to data limitations. Thus, the true cost of violence is higher than reported here.

It is important to realize that the bulk of these cost estimates—roughly 85 percent—can be attributed to nonmonetary losses such as pain, suffering, and the reduced quality of life. The remaining 15 percent include direct monetary losses to victims, lost productivity, emergency response, and program administration.

The estimates in Table 24 are based on all attempted and completed victimizations—including those that result in no physical injuries. If we adjust these estimates to account for only those victims who suffer physical injury, victim costs are considerably higher: $85,700 to $104,000 for rape, $44,300 to $55,400 for robbery, and $38,8000 to $48,400 for assault.

Table 24 summarizes the cost of society's response to violent behavior disaggregated into the categories of murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Unlike victimization costs, we are unable to estimate the cost of society's response to simple assaults.

Table 26 estimates the measurable aggregate costs of violence in the United States in 1987. It excludes murder because these incidents are apportioned to the underlying crime. In 1987, it was estimated that the cost of victimization was $8.0 to $9.6 billion for rape, $20.5 to $24.8 billion for robbery, and $81.3 to $95.2 billion for assault.

Table 27 aggregates society's response to victimization over all incidents in 1987. We estimate total measurable costs of society's response to rape to be $1.6 billion; robbery, $6.3 billion; and aggravated assault, $10.1 billion. These estimates include about $2 billion spent in response to murder where the underlying crime was either rape, robbery, or assault.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 24 Summary of Estimated Costs: Violent Behavior (averaged over all victimizations—including attempts), 1987

Cost Category

Murder

Rapea

Robberya

Assaulta

Direct victim losses

 

 

 

 

Medical costs (Table 3)

$ 5,370b

$ 376

$ 124

$ 153

Mental health costs (Table 4)c

n.a.

3,886

887

361

Property costs (Table 5)

n.a.

11

335

10

Indirect monetary losses

Emergency response

 

 

 

 

Victim services (Table 7)

311d

Police response (Table 10)

105

43

22

14

Emergency transport (Table 11)

465

6

4

2

Victim productivity

610,000

 

 

 

Due to medical (Table 12)

n.a.

196

112

79

Due to mental health (Table 4)

n.a.

1,364

310

188

Due to legal process (Table 12)

n.a.

105

46

19

Program administration (Table 13)

 

 

 

 

Health and life insurance

3,832

20

7

8

Government transfer programs

2,013

1

1

1

Insurance/overhead (property)

n.a.

1

20

1

Legal costs for civil suits

Pain, suffering and quality of life

 

 

 

 

Pain and suffering: victim (Table 14)e

1,590,000

33,300h

12,200h

8,300h

Risk of death: victim

n.a.

4,500f

5,100f

7,400f

Quality of life for family

g

10,000h

Psychological trauma to witnesses

Injuries caused by earlier victims

Total

2,212,000

54,100

19,200

16,500

NOTE: — indicates no estimate is available; n.a. indicates data are not applicable.

a Includes attempts and deaths resulting from underlying crime.

b Includes premature funeral and related expenses.

c Assumes 100 percent of those in need receive mental health care; see text.

d This is known to be an underestimate. Only those costs that can be reasonably estimated were included.

e These estimates are based on WTP values. Compensation estimates are $44,400 for rape, $16,200 for robbery, and $11,100 for assault.

f Risk of death is equal to the victim cost of death ($2.2 million) times the fraction of each crime type that results in murder. These figures must be taken out of the aggregate estimates if one includes murder; otherwise there is double counting.

g Although loss to the family is not insignificant in the case of murder, it may be accounted for partially in the $1.59 million estimate of quality of life costs to murder victims; see text.

h This estimate has a higher degree of uncertainty than many others presented here.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 25 Summary of Estimated Costs: Society's Response to Violent Behavior (averaged over all victimizations—including attempts), 1987

Cost Category

Murder

Rape

Robbery

Aggravated Assault

Precautionary measures and fear

 

 

 

 

Monetary expenditures for prevention

Crime prevention behavior

Fear of crime

Criminal justice-related costs

 

 

 

 

Criminal justice processing (Table 20)

$5,430

$1,150

$ 500

$ 580

Legal defense (Table 21)

500

125

35

60

Sanctions (Table 23)

74,970

5,420

3,680

3,735

Victim and witness interaction

a

a

a

Other noncriminal justice programs

Incarcerated offender/productivity

22,600

4,200

1,400

1,300

Overdeterrence costs

Justice costs

Offender costs

Total

103,800

10,900

5,600

5,600

NOTE: — indicates no estimate is available.

a Some of these costs have been included in Table 24, under lost victim productivity.

TABLE 26 Aggregate Cost of Violent Behavior

 

Rape

Robbery

Assault

Cost of victimization

$ 54,100

19,200

16,500

Number of victims

147,000

1,068,500

4,930,000

Aggregate cost (billion $)

8.0

20.5

81.3

NOTE: These estimates are based on the WTP approach. If pain and suffering for nonfatal injuries is valued by the compensation method, aggregate costs would increase to $9.6 billion for rape, $24.8 billion for robbery, and $95.2 billion for assault.

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

TABLE 27 Aggregate Cost of Society's Response to Victimization

 

Murder

Rape

Robbery

Aggravated Assault

Total

Cost ($)

103,800

10,900

5,600

5,600

Number of victims

20,100

147,000

1,068,500

1,630,000

Aggregate cost (billion $)

2.1

1.6

6.0

9.1

18.8

Aggregate cost with murder allocated to underlying crimea (billion $)

1.6

6.3

10.1

18.8

a Allocates 19,456 of the estimated 20,100 murders to rape, robbery, and assualt. The remaining murders are connected with property crimes such as burglery, arson, and motor vehicle theft. Their aggregate cost is less than $0.1 billion.

WHO PAYS FOR VICTIM INJURIES?

Victims and government agencies appear to bear most costs of victim injuries. Nonmonetary costs associated with pain, suffering, and reduced quality of life constitute major costs, as presented in Table 24 . These costs are borne by victims and their families.

The costs of medical treatment and lost productivity for victim injuries are paid by different sources. We estimate that 32 percent of the medical costs of victim injuries (and other injuries) are paid by government, 44 percent by private insurers, 5 percent by charity, and 19 percent by victims and their families.39 Data from the Bureau of the Census (1989) suggest that employer premium payments ultimately cover about 72 percent of the private insurance premiums and that consumers cover the rest. Government and charity provide additional funding for victim services and shelter programs, as well as for institutional care of victims who suffer severe physical or mental injuries.

Government also pays an estimated 16.5 percent of the wage losses, plus contributions to victim compensation funds in some states. Life insurance covers 9 percent of the wage losses in murders. A large, but unknown, proportion of the remaining wage losses for nonfatal injuries are covered by employers through sick leave. Victims and their families bear 78 percent of the wage losses resulting from murders and much of the wage losses resulting

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

from permanently disabling victim injuries. They bear virtually all the costs of lost household production, about 24 percent of total productivity losses. Private insurance premiums cover about 70 percent of the administrative costs of insurance reimbursement, and government covers the remainder. State and local governments also bear nearly all costs of emergency response to victimization.

Actions to reduce fear and the likelihood of victimization include both public investments in police services and private investments in self-protective measures. Clotfelter (1977:502-503) estimated the demand for self-protective measures as a function of household income and the neighborhood crime rate, and found that

the probability of taking protective measures increases with the average victimization rate for the area and also is higher for black households … [and] low income households are more likely than other households to respond to crime by simply staying at home and forgoing whatever the alternative activities might be.

There is considerable interest in shifting some of the monetary burden imposed by crime back to the offenders. Some examples include ''Son of Sam" laws, private tort actions, and government programs requiring restitution or partial payment for the cost of imposing alternative sanctions. An important area for future research would be to examine the extent to which these programs have shifted costs back to offenders.

SUMMARY OF RESULTS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

This paper sets forth a comprehensive theoretical foundation for characterizing the costs and consequences of victimization. It also reviews and updates existing monetary estimates of the cost of criminal victimization. In some instances, the costs estimated here are no more than ballpark estimates. Other costs are simply not estimated due to lack of data. Accordingly, the reader should refer to the relevant section of the paper to determine the source and strength of each estimate. Although there is considerable uncertainty surrounding each estimate, we deliberately have not attempted to estimate ranges. Provision of consistent probability ranges around these estimates would have further complicated the analysis.

Although future research no doubt will reduce some of that uncertainty, it can never be eliminated. We have argued earlier

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

that making cost estimates is a policy imperative because, in their absence, policy decisions are made on a less informed and arbitrary basis. However, that does not mean that all policy decisions should be based on simple benefit-cost comparisons. Indeed, given the uncertainty in estimating both the benefits and the costs of various policy outcomes, it is incumbent upon the analyst to attempt to account for the uncertainty in these estimates when comparing policy options. Thus, for example, one could construct ranges of costs and benefits based on various plausible assumptions to determine how often the benefit-cost ratio exceeds 1 and to estimate the mean ratio (Hofler and Witte, 1979).

It is interesting to compare the cost estimates developed here to aggregate U.S. expenditures on crime and justice. For example, the total cost of sanctions associated with murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault implied by Table 25 is about $12 billion, compared to the $15.75 billion total estimated for the United States in 1986 (Jamieson and Flanagan, 1989:2). This suggests that a good portion of the cost of sanctions in the United States is associated with punishment of violent offenders. This is consistent with the fact that about 55 percent of all prison inmates are serving time for violent offenses.

On the other hand, total criminal justice costs (police and courts) for the crimes estimated here are only about $1.9 billion compared to total U.S. costs of $37.75 billion. There are several reasons why violent offenses account for such a small part of the total police and court costs. First, a good portion of police expenditures are preventive in nature or related to traffic safety and control. (Although police expenditures designed to prevent crimes are not included here, some portion could be allocated to violent offenses—at least in theory.) Second, although violent offenders receive relatively more severe sentences, they are much fewer in number than other criminal offenders. Arrests for violent crimes account for only about 20 percent of FBI crime index arrests. Arrests for violent crimes (including simple assaults) account for only about 12 percent of all arrests nationwide. Thus, violent behavior is a major factor in the cost of corrections, but much less a factor in the cost of the rest of the criminal justice process.

There are several major gaps in the literature on the costs and consequences of violent behavior. In terms of offense types, we have not included kidnappings, bombings, arson, or child abuse. Although few estimates are available for these offenses, the methodology used here could also be applied to them. Cohen (1988a) provides some preliminary estimates of victim costs in the case of

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

kidnapping, bombing, and arson. Although we know of no cost estimates made for child abuse, Daro (1988) provides some evidence on the cost of victim treatment and family intervention programs. These are certainly areas worthy of future research.

There are also several major cost categories in need of further research. First, little is known about the effect that fear of victimization has on behavior. We have identified several categories of injury, including both the indirect monetary losses suffered by victims who make costly lifestyle or job changes as a result of their victimization and the cost to potential victims.

Second, more research is needed to assess systematically the psychological impact of victimization on victims, their families, and witnesses. The estimates in this paper are based on only a few isolated studies. Although there is a growing literature in the mental health field, much of that work is clinical. Some recent studies are attempting to find control groups and to estimate the incidence of psychological injury. More interdisciplinary work clearly needs to be done in this area—not only in assessing the incidence of injury, but also in understanding its severity. In addition, the growing trend toward bringing legal damage claims against offenders or third parties in the case of rape and child sexual abuse might prove to be a useful source of information on society's evaluation of these injuries.

Third, surprisingly little is known about the cost of victim service or other noncriminal justice programs for offenders and victims. A comprehensive survey could easily assess these costs if it was properly designed to include volunteer time and other costs not directly budgeted by nonprofit and government groups.

Finally, although we provide estimates of the cost of medical care and lost productivity due to injuries, the data sources generally available to the criminal justice community are highly suspect. Alternatives to the NCS could provide more realistic information on medical costs (and also improve our estimates of pain and suffering).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Support for this research was provided by the Dean's Summer Research Fund, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University and by The Urban Institute. The authors are grateful to Colin Loftin and Brian Wiersema for providing us with National Crime Survey data, and to Philip J. Cook, Wendy Max, and other members of the Panel on the Understanding and Control of

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

Violent Behavior who provided comments on an earlier version of this paper. All remaining errors are solely the responsibility of the authors.

NOTES

1.  

The following details of the case are taken from "A Murderous Hoax," Newsweek, January 22, 1990, pp. 16-22.

2.  

Comments by Philip J. Cook on earlier draft of this paper, April 1, 1990.

3.  

See Maltz (1975) for a critique of the crime seriousness index, as well as suggestions for improvements in crime classification schemes. Maltz also proposes that other objective measures of crime seriousness be explored, such as the amount of time until recovery from temporary physical injuries, as well as the possible monetizing of physical injuries and death.

4.  

This is due to the "wealth" effect (Cook and Graham, 1977). That is, because the marginal utility of money declines with wealth, people are willing to pay less to avoid an injury than would be required to accept one. To the extent that the wealth effect is the only difference, then WTA and WTP are likely to be fairly close if they amount to a relatively small portion of a person's wealth.

5.  

Fischhoff and Cox (1986:62) cite various reasons for this disparity. From a psychological standpoint, individuals who own a commodity might have a better idea of its value. Ethically, one can argue that someone who owns the commodity must be compensated considerably for its loss.

6.  

The incidence of serious unintentional injury has been declining over time, and treatment promoting recovery has been improved. As a result, prevalence-based unintentional injury estimates, which represent a cross-sectional snapshot, tend to be higher, because they capture higher than normal injury rates, including such costs as those associated with treating disabled American veterans from the Vietnam War.

7.  

It has been argued that even though the victim involuntarily transfers money or property to the offender, or even if the property is eventually recovered, the value of this property can be used as a proxy for resources devoted by the offender (as well as intermediaries such as fencing operations) and are thus a social cost (Becker, 1968:171, note 3). However, Demmert (1979:9) argues that if the "market" for crime is not competitive, the value of stolen property is higher than the thief's actual cost; thus, the

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

   

value of stolen property should be viewed as an upper bound on its true social cost.

8.  

The term "nonmonetary" is used throughout this paper to describe costs that are not normally traded in the marketplace, such as pain, suffering, and fear. Although they are called nonmonetary, one can attempt to place dollar values on these costs, which is the subject of the following discussion.

9.  

Cohen (1987) contains more detail on the methodology and assumptions than Cohen (1988a). Throughout the remainder of this paper, future references to both papers are cited as Cohen (1988a).

10.  

According to that study, the risk of death due to drug dealing in Washington, D.C. is 1.4 percent per year (Reuter et al., 1990:104). If we assign the same value of life to these individuals as to the average in the population—$2.2 million—that suggests a required risk compensation of $30,800 per year. Because the average drug dealer in that population earned $55,000 (Reuter et al., 1990:93), we cannot rule out the possibility that these dealers have a value of life within the range of the average population.

11.  

Losses (costs) may be generated not only by patients, but also by family members, friends, and coworkers, because such individuals may lose time from work, school, or housekeeping activities or may suffer reduction in productivity associated with the patient's condition. Hartunian et al. (1981) regard such output losses as a secondary component of indirect costs. Such costs are significant; however, because of the empirical difficulties associated with data collection and attribution of cause, these costs are virtually never estimated.

12.  

Rice et al. (1989:84) present a listing of cost of injury studies, including source; study period and methodology; total costs, as well as direct, indirect, and other related costs; and discount rate used.

13.  

Of some relevance, they do indicate that the lifetime monetary costs of firearm injuries average $54,000, with fatalities responsible for 84 percent of the costs (Rice et al., 1989:46, 49).

14.  

The NCS, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, is a household survey that has been implemented by the Bureau of the Census since the early 1970s. The data base, which includes both crimes known to the police and those not reported, provides the only nationally representative estimates of nonfatal criminal victimization and the harms associated with victimization due to rape, robbery, assault, personal and household larceny,

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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burglary, and motor vehicle theft (see U.S. Department of Justice, 1989b, for an expanded discussion of NCS data and methodology).

15.  

In some respects, the undercounting of children, transients, and the homeless represents an important omission because these persons are at greatest risk of victimization. Further, the omission of institutionalized cohorts is troubling because persons who sustained very severe injury due to victimization may be institutionalized, receiving ongoing care for long-term temporary or permanent impairment. The costs for such care can be extremely high and probably are not reflected in this analysis. Finally, although this is not a study of incidence of victim injury, calculations of costs per victimization are affected by the accuracy of incidence estimates because the number of incidents serves as the denominator when costs of injury are distributed across all victims.

16.  

Estimates of domestic violence, child abuse, and nonstranger victimizations very considerably. Some victims do not report such incidents for a variety of reasons: for example, nonstranger victimization may not be regarded as a crime; the incident may be viewed as a private matter; or the offender may be present during the survey interview, thus constraining discussion. It may be possible to triangulate estimates of such offenses to improve existing incidence data. Cost estimates could also be refined based on the distribution of injuries associated with adult assault and child abuse captured by hospital trauma registries and data bases.

17.  

One measure of the possible underreporting of medical costs by victims is represented by gunshot wounds. The NCS data document an average medical cost per injury that ranges from $816.87 (for robbery—gunshot, conscious) to $13,000 (for rape—gunshot, conscious). These figures are significantly different from the $33,159 average medical cost of firearm injury per hospitalized victim and the $458 average medical cost for injured, nonhospitalized victims reported by Rice et al. (1989:xxviii).

18.  

They used data on length of hospital stay from NHDS or NASS, or medical cost data from the National Medical Care Utilization and Expenditure Survey, the National Council on Compensation Insurance's Detailed Claims Information data base, or the Comprehensive Health and Medical Program for the Uniformed Services.

19.  

This data base contains data on nearly 500,000 injured people. Once a claim enters the sample, all medical costs are tracked until the workers compensation insurer is able to sell the claim

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
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to a health insurer. The amount that the health insurer charged for paying all future medical costs is added as a final cost.

20.  

This represents the weighted average in 1987 dollars of the costs per patients who die within one hour of arriving at a Washington, D.C. emergency room, having presented with central nervous system or cardiovascular injuries (Rice et al., 1989).

21.  

This is based on an average cost of $1,235 plus a factor of 1.40 to allow for physician and professional fees. These assumptions were based on documentation provided by Ellen MacKenzie and Ted Miller as a result of their independent contributions to Rice et al. (1989).

22.  

Because all murder victims would eventually die at some later date, this cost reflects only the difference between a funeral today and the projected value of a funeral at the end of the average expected lifetime.

23.  

It should be noted that the literature review for the research in Cohen (1988a) was completed in early spring 1986. Due to the time lag associated with completion of the study and publication of results, several important studies published in 1987 and 1988 were not included in that earlier study.

24.  

According to the American Psychiatric Association (1987:62), the median hourly fee for a psychiatrist in 1985 ranged from $81 per hour in an office to $101 in a hospital setting. Individual psychotherapy fees for social workers and psychologists ranged from $60 to $70 per hour. Although the average number of visits per calendar year is 8.2, the distribution is highly skewed, with about half of the patients having fewer than 3 visits, whereas the upper tenth percentile have 25 or more and account for about half the total expenditures (American Psychiatric Association, 1987:137).

25.  

As this book goes to press, a new study by Cohen and Miller (1994a) estimated actual mental health care expenditures by victims of crime. Estimates were derived from a survey of mental health care professionals. Actual expenditures are considerably less than reported in Table 4. For example, actual mental health expenditures for rape victims is estimated to be $589 compared to $3,886 in "potential" costs.

26.  

This may not be a reasonable assumption. According to Kimmich (1985:71-72), most of the private social service agencies that serve children and receive little government support have small total revenues. Most of the larger agencies rely more heavily on government funding. Kimmich goes on to estimate that in 1982, 48-49 percent of all funding for health, mental health and social service agencies for children (excluding day care) was government

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

   

sponsored. This estimate does not differentiate among federal, state, and local government support.

27.  

However, because police injuries presumably are included in NCS injury estimates, to include them here would result in double counting when aggregating costs.

28.  

This is consistent with Waller et al. (1990) who found that despite presumptions that injured workers tend to malinger, such individuals actually do not return to housework or recreational activities before they return to work.

29.  

As part of an earlier Federal Highway Administration project, through a series of meetings with five federal agencies, a consensus was reached on the conceptual method for valuing lost days of housework (Miller et al., 1989a). Note that a day of housework is not an eight-hour day. It is the number of hours someone works at home, which varies depending on sex, age, household structure, and employment status. The valuation method includes a procedure for averaging values across these parameters.

30.  

The NCS estimates that 67.3 percent of injured victims had health insurance coverage or were eligible for public medical services (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1989a:Table 76). However, this does not detail the percentage of victims that fall within each category. Because the different types of coverage involve different administrative rates, reimbursement rates were estimated by using the percentage of medical costs reimbursed for all injuries from Rice et al. (1989). The higher reimbursement rate for injuries in motor vehicle crashes was removed by using survey data from All-Industry Research Advisory Council (1988) and Miller (1989b).

31.  

The insurance administrative costs were computed using 1987 insurance loss ratios (A.M. Best Company, 1988). Some consumer advocates assert that these published insurance company statistics on loss adjustment expenses include expenses that are not loss specific. Nevertheless, no better estimates of administrative costs of claims are available.

32.  

For murder, the administrative cost percentage was applied to medical costs excluding funeral costs.

33.  

Similar ratios of plaintiff legal expenses to compensation are reported by the All-Industry Research Advisory Council (1988).

34.  

Note that the median awards also increased. The current Jury Verdict Research, Inc. study reports a median award of $68,000, with a verdict range of $13,000 to $750,000. Earlier data used in Cohen (1988a) were based on a median award of $42,000, with a range of $6,500 to $100,000 (in 1982 dollars).

Suggested Citation:"The Costs and Consequences of Violent Behavior in the United States." National Research Council. 1994. Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4422.
×

35.  

These data were provided by the FBI, Uniform Crime Reports division.

36.  

According to John Shepard, Federal Judicial Center, the reported case weights can be converted to hours by multiplying each weight by 4.

37.  

The authors wish to thank Robert Santos-Alborna and Jeffrey M. Silbert, of the Metro-Dade Department of Justice Assistance, for providing these data. The data were computed by using the Dade Justice Improvement Model.

38.  

Although the estimates of employment are for different base years, comparable years for the number of inmates are available. In 1986, there were an estimated 450,000 state prisoners (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988b) and 274,000 jail inmates (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988a). These numbers were used to arrive at the weighted estimate.

39.  

Data in All-Industry Research Advisory Council (1988) and Miller (1989b) were used to remove the motor vehicle crash reimbursement from the medical reimbursement data for injuries in Rice et al. (1989).

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This book analyzes the consequences of violence and strategies for controlling them. Included are reviews of public perceptions and reactions to violence; estimates of the costs; the commonalities and complementarities of criminal justice and public health responses; efforts to reduce violence through the prediction and classification of violent offenders; and the relationships between trends in violence and prison population during a period of greatly increased use of incarceration.

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