The federal government is not responsible for estimating the costs of crime. However, federal agencies support the development of research either by sponsoring academic studies or conducting direct research of information used to develop cost estimates. For example, DOJ components collect and report on annual crime statistics and government criminal justice expenditures. Specifically, the FBI works with local, state, and other law enforcement agencies to obtain information on reported crime incidents, which researchers use in cost of crime estimates. Also, BJS manages programs to estimate national crime victimization trends and victims’ costs. BJS also produces annual estimates of federal, state, and local governments’ criminal justice costs. In addition, the NIJ has awarded grants to support academic research on the cost of crime. Further, other federal agencies have studied aspects of the cost of crime pertaining to their missions. For instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a study on the cost of domestic violence, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released reports on the cost and extent of consumer fraud in the United States. What is “Street Crime?” Researchers and law enforcement often use the term “street crime” to refer to a group of serious offenses that generally require personal contact between the offender and the victim or the victim’s property. There are eight street crimes that the Federal Bureau of Investigation reports nationally, including criminal homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. For the purposes of this report, we define crime as a social harm that federal or state law makes punishable by criminal sanction or penalty. While cost of crime estimates may focus on serious “street crimes,” a broader cost of crime measure can include any illegal activities with a criminal sanction or penalty. Such crimes include felonies and misdemeanors, and may include both reported and unreported criminal activity. Definitions of crime may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. However, the National Academies developed 11 categories to classify crimes throughout the country. See table 1 below. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies) Established by Congress as a private, non- profit society of scholars, the National Academies is charged to provide independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology and to conduct other activities to inform public policy decisions. Members of the National Academies cover major scientific and social science branches, including statistics, criminology, and economics. In 2013, the Department of Justice tasked the National Academies to convene a panel to help the department modernize the nation’s crime statistics. In response, the National Academies released a report in 2016 that included, among other things, an updated approach for classifying crime. This approach identified 11 categories of crimes, which appear in table 1. A cost is a monetary value associated with the negative effect of a crime. When estimating costs of crime, researchers consider the effects that occur to individuals, households, communities, and to local and state governments, and the federal government. Researchers have developed a variety of terms to characterize the numerous effects on costs of crime. While not all researchers use the same terminology to analyze costs, studies generally consider the following elements: Tangible costs: Tangible costs are those where the effect can be valued by observing product or service transactions that arise in response to or in anticipation of criminal activity. Such costs include the value of damaged property, medical care to treat injuries, and costs to install alarm systems to avoid crime. Intangible costs: Intangible costs result from negative effects of crime, but the effects do not have directly observed market values. Such costs from crime include lost quality of life as a result of victimization, fear in the community, or avoidance behaviors to reduce the likelihood of being victimized. Timing of the cost in relation to the crime: While the most recognized costs of crime are those that occur as a direct consequence of the crime, such as the cost to recover from crime-related injuries, researchers consider secondary consequences of crime as well. Such consequences may occur before or after a particular crime occurs. For example, some costs of crime occur in anticipation of crime, for instance to avoid victimization. Other costs occur as a response to crime, such as the cost of judicial proceedings or the costs to incarcerate offenders. Who bears the cost: Crime costs can be borne by individuals, such as the victim or the victim’s family, employers or businesses, and broader society, such as when public property is destroyed. Societal costs can also take the form of taxpayer funds for crime prevention or criminal justice system expenses. Cost estimates may also include not only victims’ costs, but also costs to potential victims (such as costs associated with the fear of crime), future victims, offenders, and offenders’ families. See figure 1 for more information. The United States has two primary sources for measuring the magnitude of crime: the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, and the BJS National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program The FBI has managed the UCR Program since its inception in 1930. According to the FBI, its UCR Program is the primary law enforcement national crime statistics program with over 18,000 city, county, university/college, state, federal, and tribal law enforcement agencies participating in the program. While participating in the UCR Program is voluntary, the FBI stated that the statistics from the program have become a vital tool for law enforcement agencies to help administer, operate, and manage their criminal justice functions. UCR Program: The UCR Program compiles data on reported crime incidents from participating local, state, and other law enforcement agencies on 10 serious types of crime—criminal homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, human trafficking-related commercial sex acts, and human trafficking-related involuntary servitude. The FBI releases national and subnational crime statistics from the UCR Program in annual publications titled Crime in the United States. To collect data for the UCR Program, the FBI uses two systems: the traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS) and the newer National Incident- Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Law enforcement agencies that use the SRS provide data on reported crime offenses in the 10 crime categories. Law enforcement agencies opting to use the NIBRS can provide greater detail on a wider array of reported offenses than they can through the SRS, while still having the capability to report offenses in the 10 crime categories. According to the FBI, the UCR Program covers almost 98 percent of the American population. National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) The NCVS was first administered in 1973. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) manages the survey questions in the NCVS and publishes the findings from the survey. In the most recent year, about 95,800 households and 163,900 persons 12 or older participated. Once selected, households remain in the sample for 3 years, and eligible persons in these households are interviewed every 6 months either in-person or over the phone for a total of seven interviews. BJS works in concert with the Bureau of the Census, which is the agency that administers the survey. BJS designed the survey to answer questions about the effectiveness of policing and law enforcement. It has been the basis for better understanding criminal victimization in the United States. Over the years, NCVS has grown in its scope to collect information on different forms of victimization. For instance, in response to the Crime Victims with Disabilities Awareness Act, Pub. L. No. 105-301, 112 Stat. 2838 (1998), the NCVS began producing measures of the nature of crimes against individuals with developmental disabilities. In the latest published survey administered in 2015, the NCVS identified 34 different crime types in general categories such as violent crime and property crime. NCVS: The NCVS is a nationally representative household survey on crime victimization with the intent to capture those crimes not reported to police, in addition to reported crimes. To collect survey information, the BJS developed a series of questions for interviewers to ask of household members ages 12 and above. While varying definitions of certain crimes may affect how law enforcement agencies report them in the UCR Program, the NCVS avoids using crime-type labels and legalistic language as much as possible. Instead, survey respondents describe the contextual factors of an incident. BJS analysts use these contextual factors to estimate national crime victimization rates. Further, BJS designed the NCVS to be able to capture multiple elements of a crime, instead of information on the most severe offense. Whereas, based on the UCR SRS hierarchical coding rules, law enforcement agencies will only report a rape that occurred during a burglary as an incidence of rape in the SRS. However, the NCVS can identify multiple offenses that occur during one incident. Thus, the NCVS is less likely to underestimate crime rates for certain crime only because a crime occurred in conjunction with a more severe crime. BJS releases national crime victimization statistics from the NCVS in annual publications titled Criminal Victimization. Based on a survey of experts associated with the cost of crime and a review of literature in the field, we found that there is no commonly used approach for estimating the costs of crime. We identified four primary methods to estimate costs. However, each method has limitations in its approach or with the usefulness of the estimates. In addition, some experts told us that current methodologies are inadequate to fully estimate costs. Further, researchers face numerous challenges in developing cost of crime estimates, such as estimating a value for intangible costs of crime. As a result of these challenges, research has produced widely varying estimates on the costs of crime.