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                            Library & Multimedia
 Victim Costs and Consequences: A New Look
NCJ Number
              155282

Author(s)
          T R Miller;
                        M A Cohen;
                        B Wiersema
Date Published

January 1996
Length
              31 pages
Publication Series
          NIJ Research Report
Annotation
              This report documents the results of a 2-year multidisciplinary research effort to estimate the costs and consequences of personal crime for Americans.
Abstract
              Data sources for the incidence of crime included national victimization studies and local studies. People and households in the United States faced more than 49 million crime attempts annually in 1987-1990. The annual toll includes more than 16 million violent crimes and attempted crimes. In 1990, 31,000 deaths resulted. This report explains the nature of and how the costs were estimated for the following tangible victim losses: medical care, property damage and loss, mental health care, police and fire services, victim services, and victim productivity. Intangible losses include pain, suffering, and reduced quality of life. Personal crime is estimated to cost $105 billion annually in medical costs, lost earnings, and public program costs related to victim assistance. These tangible losses do not account for the full impact of crime on victims, however, because they ignore pain, suffering, and lost quality of life.  Including pain, suffering, and the reduced quality of life increases the cost of crime to victims to an estimated $450 billion annually. Violent crime, including drunk driving and arson, accounts for $426 billion of this total; property crime accounts for $24 billion. These estimates exclude several crimes that were not included in this study but that also have large impacts, notably many forms of white-collar crime and drug crimes. 9 tables and 51 references
      
  
          Additional Details
Grant Number(s)
        90-IJ-CX-0050


  
  
        
  Agencies
        NIJ


  
  
        
  Publication Type
        Report (Study/Research)
    
  
  
Date Published: January 1, 1996
    
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Related Datasets
        
                      http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06581
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