The study of victims is called victimology. Both are difficult to measure precisely. Direct costs include state expenditures in the criminal justice system and the actual monetary costs lost by the victim. Indirect costs include costs for security systems, private police, higher insurance rates, loss of productivity, and medical treatment. It is now estimated that the direct costs of crime exceed 425 billion each year.
Indirect costs are essentially impossible to fully identify and to accurately measure.
The most frequent form of child victimization is child abuse, usually committed by parents, siblings or relatives. Measures of psychological abuse are not recorded or maintained. The abuse of children is a category of rising incidence. Since it is a very difficult type of crime to detect, it is believed to be greatly under reported, with estimates that its true rate of incidence is as much as 10x its officially reported rate. In addition, it is believed that the abuse of children is related to eating disorders, psychological maladies, future criminality, profound unhappiness, and suicide.