“The Aggregate Cost of Crime in the United States”, 2021-11-01 (; similar):
Estimates of crime’s burden inform public and private decisions about crime-prevention measures. More than counts of criminal offenses, the aggregate cost of crime conveys the scale of problems from crime and the value of deterrence.
This article offers an estimate of the total annual cost of crime in the United States, including the direct costs of law enforcement, criminal justice, and victims’ losses and the indirect costs of private deterrence, fear and agony, and time lost to avoidance and recovery. The findings update crime-cost estimates of past decades while expanding the scope of coverage to include categories missing from past studies…New elements that have not appeared in previous comprehensive studies of the cost of crime include the costs of premature deaths and suicides caused by incarceration, the rapes and sexual assaults taking place in prison, and the decreased post-incarceration earnings of convicted criminals.
The estimated annual cost of crime is $4.71–$5.76 trillion including transfers from victims to criminals and $2.86–$3.92 trillion net of transfers.
…Crime exacts a toll on society far greater than its direct repercussions. An environment of crime and concomitant distrust prompts expenditures on prevention, recovery, justice, and corrections. Beyond asset transfers from victim to criminal, losses to crime comprise lives, health, fear, work, human capital, and time…These costs are comparable to the $3.83 trillion spent on health care (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid 2020) and the $2.71 trillion spent on food and shelter (US Department of 2020a) annually in the United States.
… The enormity of crime’s cost adds relevance to the distribution of crime’s burdens. 2020 provide a breakdown of crime rates by demographic characteristics. Rates of violent-crime victimization per 1,000 persons are the highest among the group that includes Pacific Islanders, American Indians, Alaska Natives, and persons with 2 or more races (66.3) and lowest for Asian Americans (7.5). Households with incomes less than $25,000 per year experience 37.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people, while every other income level has a rate between 16.2 and 19.7. Women and men have similar rates of violent-crime victimization, 20.8 and 21.2, respectively, although women experience 88.6% of all reported rapes and sexual assaults. Rates of serious-crime victimization are highest for 18–24-year-olds (37.2) and lowest for those 65 and older (6.0). As the broader cost implications of crime come to light, added protection or assistance for groups with inordinate burdens may be justified.
The findings also indicate the portion of crime’s burden borne by crime victims, taxpayers via the government’s crime-related expenditures, criminals and their families, and citizens trying to avoid crime. Crime victims bear 58.3% of the cost of crime in the form of psychic costs, transfers to criminals, and the costs of recovery. Government expenditures, such as those on policing and corrections, amount to 19.9% of the total cost of crime. Criminals and their families internalize 13.0% of the cost of crime, largely because of the expenses of drug use, prenatal exposure to drugs, and losses associated with incarceration. Consumers shoulder the remaining 8.8% of the cost of crime by purchasing preventative goods and services and through the time lost to preventative measures.