The Cost of Pain Suffering from Crime in Canada

3. Data Sources

3. Data Sources

To estimate the cost of pain and suffering from crime in Canada, three kinds of information are deemed necessary: the number of incidents of crime, the proportion of crime victims expressing fear about safety, and the willingness of crime victims to pay for safety.

3.1 Number of Crimes

An important component of the present study was obtaining an estimation of the number of incidents of different types of crime that occurred in Canada in a given period of time. In Canada, crimes known to the police are recorded in the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) which has been compiled by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS) since 1962. The UCR is an aggregate census based on almost 100 percent compliance by about 1,800 different police services across Canada who report the number of crimes known to them to CCJS each month. A count of crimes known to police includes records of all complaints of crime made to police agencies by victims, infractions discovered by police officers, and other possible sources (Siegel and McCormick, 1999). Despite the importance and common use of such police statistics by researchers, crimes that occurred but were not reported to police by victims remain an important omission in the UCR. One way to estimate the extent of unreported crime is through victimization surveys. For example, by comparing victimization data from the General Social Survey (GSS) conducted in 1999 to police statistics, Mihorean (2001) noted that almost 60% of victimization incidents were not reported to police; only about 1/3 of household thefts and less than 1/4 of sexual assaults were reported to the police. Using the GSS data from 1993, Gartner and Doob (1994) reported that only 2/3 of the breaking and entering offences, half of the vehicle thefts, 1/3 of the assaults, and 1/10 of the sexual assaults discovered in the GSS were reported to the police. Not surprisingly, victimization surveys consistently report higher rates of victimization than statistics reported by the police. Similar observations can also be found in international evidence. For example, Brand and Price (2000) used the British Crime Survey to estimate the cost of crime in England and Wales and found that the number of crimes reported by the survey was about as much as four times higher than that recorded by the police. It is apparent that in calculating the cost of pain and suffering from crime, information from victimization surveys can help to provide more realistic estimates on the number of incidents that occurred. The present study attempts to provide estimates of this cost in Canada by using victimization data from the GSS whenever possible. For crimes that are not contained in the 1999 GSS on victimization, police statistics from Canadian Crime Statistics, a publication based on the UCR, is used as the basis for projecting estimates.

The analysis in this study uses, wherever appropriate, data from the 1999 GSS on victimization. Estimates based on police statistics are provided for comparison purposes. According to the information collected, the risk of violent victimization in Canada remains low-only 5% of the population reported being victims of violent crime in 1999-and the type of violent crime with the highest rating was assault. The risk of being a victim of property crime, on the other hand, is much higher, at almost 20% (Mihorean et al., 2001).

For the 1999 GSS, interviews were conducted by telephone with 25,876 Canadians aged 15 and above. One of the main objectives of the survey was to measure, as in previous years, the occurrence of violent crimes, including assault, sexual offences, and robbery, and property crimes, including breaking and entering, motor vehicle theft, theft of household property, and vandalism. Victims were asked when and where the crimes occurred and how they were affected by the experience. For incidents that involved more than one type of offence, the most serious offence was used for classification purposes. Offences were ranked from most to least serious as follows: sexual assault, robbery, assault, breaking and entering, motor vehicle theft, theft of personal and household property, and vandalism (Mihorean, 2001).

In addition, the survey asked victims whether the incidents were reported to the police. This piece of information can be useful in comparing victimization survey results with police statistics. For the remaining three types of crimes, namely homicide, drug offences, and Criminal Code traffic offences, for which the GSS provides no information, the analysis was based on police records from Canadian Crime Statistics extracted from the UCR. This analysis compares, wherever possible, police data and information from the GSS on victimization and provides an estimation of the cost of the pain and suffering experienced by crime victims. Table 1 provides a summary of the statistics on the number of incidents for different categories of crime reported by the GSS on victimization and the Canadian Crime Statistics.

Table 1: Total Number of Incidents of Crime in 1999
  GSS on Victimization (sample population = 25,876) Canadian Crime Statistics (population = 30,491,294)
Total Number of Incidents Rate of Victimization (per 1,000 in population) Total Number of Incidents Rate of Victimization (per 1,000 in population)
Violent Crimes N/A N/A 291,330 10
Homicide N/A N/A 536 0.02
Assault 549 21 233,465 8
Sexual Assault 300 12 23,872 0.8
Robbery 245 10 28,745 1
Property Crimes N/A N/A 1,300,650 43
Breaking and Entering 906 35 318,448 10
Motor Vehicle Theft 1,252 48 161,405 5
Theft (Not Vehicle) 2,194 85 701,573 23
Mischief/Vandalism 947 37 312,563 10
Drug Offences N/A N/A 79,871 3
Criminal Code Traffic Offences N/A N/A 137,138 5
All Crimes N/A N/A 2,613,348 86

3.2 Pain and Suffering of Crime Victims

Research shows that victimization can affect a victim's perceptual world and cause pain and suffering as a result. Furthermore, the psychological effects of trauma caused by crimes can be long-lasting (Hill, 2003). Greenberg and Ruback (1992) found that anger and fear were among the most common emotional responses to victimization. Moreover, while anger was more likely to be evident with victims of property crime, fear was found to be more prominent with victims of sexual assault and other types of violent crime.

The 1999 GSS on victimization asked all respondents about their fear of crime. The survey results showed that Canadians generally feel safe. It indicated that 91% of Canadians reported being very or somewhat satisfied with their personal safety. The survey also contains detailed information on how crimes affected the feelings and emotions of victims, which were expressed in terms of anger, depression, disappointment, and anxiety. For instance, the survey found that more than 50% of property crime victims felt angry after the crime and about 25% of crime victims had their main activity disrupted for at least one day as a result of their experience. Overall, victims of sexual assault were the most likely to experience fear, followed by victims of robbery. In general, the victims of violent crime experienced higher levels of fear and distress than the victims of property crime. Information from the GSS, therefore, provides estimates for the proportion of the population expressing emotional pain and suffering caused by different types of crime.

3.3 Estimation of the Cost of Pain and Suffering from Crime

Once the number of each type of crime for a given period of time is estimated, data on the cost of the pain and suffering experienced by crime victims is required to estimate the total cost of pain and suffering for different categories of crime. As previously mentioned, the analysis in this study estimates such costs by evaluating, wherever possible, the level of distress, anger, fear, and anxiety experienced by crime victims. Estimates from previous studies on the cost of pain and suffering from crime (Anderson, 1999; Brantingham and Easton, 1998; Cohen, 1988 and 1990; Miller, Cohen, and Wiersema, 1996) are also used as references for the estimation.

One way to estimate the burden of pain and suffering on crime victims is to obtain information from the amount of jury awards given to victims for the suffering and loss of productivity resulting from crime. Waller and Welsh (1995), for example, used information from jury awards in the United States as a proxy in their estimation of the cost of the pain and suffering of crime victims in Canada; the available information on jury awards in Canada was insufficient.

Another approach for estimating the cost of pain and suffering is to measure the contingent valuation people place on the avoidance of pain and suffering associated with being a victim of crime. Anderson (1999), for instance, used labour market estimates as a proxy for the value of life and injury based on the contingent valuation people place on work that might affect their health and cause pain and suffering. Although the level of distress may be considerably higher in the case of violent crime compared to the distress expected from a risky work environment, such a calculation is still useful in that it can represent the lower bound of estimates for the risks to life and health that violent crime presents. The contingent valuation approach is particularly appropriate when information on the existence of traumatic feelings among victims of different crimes is made available from the GSS on victimization.