1. Economic and Social Cost of Crime
Crime and Justice User Day
Joe Perman: Assistant Economist, Scottish Government
Economic and Social Cost of Crime
Application in Criminal Careers

2. Purpose What data we use What we use the cost estimates for
Total costs – useful to know??
Value for money of interventions
e.g Who should we target with limited resources
What else could we be doing?

3. Data sources Economic and Social Costs of Crime
Scottish Crime and Justice Survey
Reconviction Rates in Scotland
Police Recorded and Cleared Up Crime
Criminal Proceedings in Scottish Courts
About taking estimates from England and Wales, and applying them to Scottish offending data to estimate the economic and social costs of crime
To show you the range of data we use

4. Anticipation Consequence Response Economic and Social Costs of Crime
Security
Insurance
Consequence
Property, lost output,
health services,
emotional and physical impact
Response
Criminal Justice System
(courts, police, prisons, etc)

6. Multipliers
We may have data on the number of police recorded crime or convictions – but we are interested in the actual incidence of crime
i.e. including those which are not reported or recorded for various reasons

7. CONVICTION RATE
CLEAR-UP RATE
POLICE RECORDED CRIME RATE
ACTUAL CRIME RATE

8. 1 2 4 1 3 4 9
388
SERIOUS ASSAULT
SHOPLIFTING

9. How we get there Charges proved from Criminal Proceedings
Police clear up rate
Police recorded crimes
Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (and business surveys, research)

10. Table of multipliers and costs
Crime/offence group
Scotland crime/Offence name
Conviction
Cleared up
Recorded
Actual incidence
Unit cost (£2010/11)
Non-sexual crimes of violence
Murder 1
£ ,736,998
Serious assault 2 3 11
£ ,504
Robbery and assault with intent to rob 5 6
£ ,670
Other non-sexual crimes of violence 14
£ ,591
Crimes of indecency
Rape & attempted rape 17 31
176
£ ,487
Indecent assault etc 7 12
116
£ ,111
Other crimes of indecency
£ ,137
Crimes of dishonesty
Housebreaking 4 16 36
£ ,891
Theft by OLP 20 63 £
Theft by from a motor vehicle (OLP) 70
£ ,022
Theft of a motor vehicle & contents including taking & driving 8 18 19
£ ,927
Theft by shoplifting 61 £
Other theft 23
Other crimes of dishonesty 13
Fire-raising, vandalism etc
Fire-raising 25
148
£ ,031
Vandalism, etc
138
Miscellaneous offences
Minor assault
£ ,913
Minor assault of an emergency worker
£ ,714
Breach of the peace
Drunkenness
Other miscellaneous offences
Other crimes
Crimes against public justice
Handling an offensive weapon
Drugs

11. An assumption too far?
Multipliers fine at population level analysis, but what about small samples?
Individuals? One conviction of housebreaking means we guess that person has actually broke into 9
Some people better at not getting caught?
No control group – we are assuming that without intervention offending frequency would have remained at average rate seen over pre-intervention comparison period.
However, offending may continued to increase, or project may have intervened at peak of offending and it would have naturally fallen anyway. Also, overall crime has been falling (x%), should this have been this control group?

12. Applications Total Cost of Crime
Value for Money of Criminal Interventions
Reducing Reoffending Project
Presumption against short term sentences
Criminal careers
Males, females, under/over 21
Persistent offenders vs long term prisoners

13. Total costs - Tree plot Based on police recorded crimes
Miscellaneous offences
Crimes of indecency
Crimes of dishonesty
Crimes of violence
Other crimes
Vandalism and fire-raising
Based on police recorded crimes

14. Breakdown of the costs of crime
This is taken from a wider analysis of the total costs of crime in Scotland.
Used to illustrate the breakdown between in the economic and social costs and their relative magnitude.
Wont be the exact same because of offence mix.
The criminal justice system costs are nearly 50% police costs, with the next highest being prisons at around 20%.
savings to the CJS £2.5 million
Savings to wider society £8 million

15. Value for money of Criminal Justice Interventions
Ex-Post – evaluating interventions
Ex-Ante – using historical offending data to look at “what if” scenarios
Both aimed at identifying the value for money in policies aimed at reducing reoffending based on the costs of crime and therefore the potential savings from reducing it
Costs of offending – and subsequent savings of reduced offending.
Doesn’t look at other benefits – quality of life of offenders, employment opportunities, health, social services etc

16. Persistent Offenders Project
Decrease from 2,800 to 1,900 --> 32% fall

17. Persistent Offenders Project – Pre and post intervention crime rates

18. Persistent Offenders Project - Total Costs
Cost of crime
Before
After
Savings
£30 million
£19 million
£11 million
Project Cost = £1million over the 3 years
 NET BENEFITS of £10 million

19. illustrative!! we are not implying causality
use the estimates to illustrate the potential savings available
Magnitudes, rather than pounds and pence
Should be used in conjunction with other quantitative and qualitative data

20. Presumption against short sentences
Don’t know the impact on reoffending by moving someone from custodial sentence to community sentence
Differing characteristics etc
Use breakeven analysis to find the reducing in offending needed to balance out the increased costs
Increased costs
Incarceration effect – not locked up so still able to offend

21. Reoffending Rates/Frequencies
Reconviction rate over time
Average annual number of reconvictions
Frequency gives much better information than just the binary yes/no

22. Custodial Cohort Costs
This is illustrated below in Figure 3 for the 3,262 annual unique offenders who are given short custodial sentences. The economic and social costs of reoffending for this cohort begin at almost £250 million in the first year and fall to around £75 million by year 10 as the average level of reoffending decreases.
We can compare these ‘do nothing’ costs against the costs of a policy bringing about a change in sentencing and reoffending behaviour and use the difference to estimate any resulting costs and savings.

23. £6m 1%
over a ten-year period, it only takes a marginal reduction in the frequency of reoffending (1%) for the increased costs of the change in sentencing behaviour to be balanced by the longer-term savings from reduced crime
If offending reduced to levels of current community sentences we find that potential net benefits increase in each year, reaching a steady state level of nearly £290 million per annum after 10 years.
Community sentences £4.25 million
Custodial sentences £2.5 million
Incarceration effect £4.25 million
Net Costs £6 million per annum

24. Criminal Careers
Follow cohort over 10 years using unit level conviction data
Split by age and gender to start with
Only looking at the ‘average’ across each cohort, will be differing distinct ‘types’ within each groups

25. Criminal Careers
Frequency of convictions

26. Cost of Reoffending
After applying MULTIPLIERS and unit costs

27. Average cost per offence

28. Persistent versus long term
Where should we focus limited resources
The ‘serious’, high tariff long term prisoners are an easy target
But what about the harder segment, low tariff, persistent offenders?

29. Frequency of convictions

30. Average cost per offender

31. Cost as a proxy for seriousness

32. Average cost per offender
Average per offender
Number in segment
Prolific
(3 previous)
£ ,000
20,365
Very short term
(< 6 months)
£ ,000
4,139
Long term
(> 4 years)
£ ,000
401
Long termers low average cost because already spend lots of money on them?? Bit far fetched.

33. Size does matter? Prolific (3+ previous) Very short termers
£3.9 billion
Very short termers
£1.1 billion
Long termers
£59 million
Violence
Dishonesty
Damage
Other
Sexual
When add in size of of target segment, the total
Questions: those with 3 or more convictions will no doubt pass through prison at some point so is it nearly just same group. Where would be the best place to target them.
Spread resources too thinly?

34. What next?? Defining the segments?
Where else could you see cost estimates being used?
???