The Cost of Pain Suffering from Crime in Canada

Executive Summary

One of the major goals in formulating crime control policies and programs is to enhance the well-being of society. Economic analysis can be a valuable tool in working towards achieving this goal. Comparing the monetary costs of a program to its monetary benefits can help determine whether a particular crime control program is economically efficient. When its benefits outweigh its costs, then a program is considered efficient and beneficial to society.

There are, however, few studies that systematically evaluate the costs and benefits of crime prevention programs. Part of the difficulty with this kind of study is that information on certain costs and benefits, for example, intangible costs of crime such as pain, suffering, and reduced quality of life experienced by crime victims, are not easy to obtain and evaluate. Early studies involving the estimation of the cost of crime always omitted the cost of the pain and suffering of crime victims because of a lack of available information.

Two data sources are typically used to estimate victim costs:

The methodology developed in this study proposes that an estimation of the cost of pain and suffering requires information on the number of incidents for each type of crime, the proportion of victims feeling worried about safety, and the value of the perceived and actual mental distress resulting from the crime experience. For the purpose of the present study, information on the number of crime incidents was obtained from official police statistics recorded in the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and from the 1999 General Social Survey (GSS) on victimization. There were, however, limitations with each of these two data sources. Police-reported statistics tend to underestimate the actual number of crime incidents due to underreporting and police resource constraints, and the information obtained from victimization surveys such as the GSS may present sample selection problems which can bias the estimation. For the proportion of victims feeling worried about safety, information from the GSS about victims' perceptions regarding personal safety was used. With regard to the average cost of pain and suffering, estimates from previous literature were used as a guideline. The implicit average value of human life was estimated to be $72,000 [1] for non-fatal injuries. For fatal injuries, it was estimated to be between $4.1 million to $9.6 million dollars.

The estimated cost of the pain and suffering of crime victims was shown to be much higher when the calculation was based on information from the GSS on victimization than the calculation based on police-reported statistics. The more conservative estimates were obtained based on the assumption that the fear experienced by crime victims did not entail life-threatening injuries. The estimated cost of pain and suffering from all crimes, based on non-fatal injuries, was $35.83 billion using the GSS data, compared to $9.83 billion using police-reported statistics. The estimated cost of pain and suffering from violent crimes, based on non-fatal injuries, was $20.43 billion using the GSS data and $5.84 billion using police-reported statistics. For property crimes, based on non-fatal injuries, it was $15.04 billion using the GSS data and $3.63 billion using police-reported statistics.

These figures represent preliminary estimates of the cost of pain and suffering from different types of crime. Limitations of the GSS in estimating costs more precisely are being identified. Victimization surveys with more carefully designed survey questions would help in estimating more precisely the cost of pain and suffering experienced by crime victims using the methodology introduced in this paper. Further research effort might also be directed towards more sensitivity analysis to better examine how the cost estimates can change in response to different assumptions and scenarios.

[1] Unless otherwise indicated, dollar amounts are in 1999 Canadian dollars.