NCJ Number
74673
Date Published
1980
Length
14 pages
Annotation
In this attempt to look at crime and crime prevention from a purely economic viewpoint, costs and benefits of crime and criminal justice are examined at the national and local community level for crime prevention planning purposes.
Abstract
Paradoxically, crime generates a vast range of employment opportunities in a society (e.g., police, judicial and correctional personnel, criminologists, social workers, forensic psychologists and psychiatrists, manufacturers of security and anti-crime devices, undertakers, doctors and nurses, pharmacists, repairmen of property damaged by vandals, and, finally, insurance companies dealing in crime risk coverage). The same could be said for natural disasters and war, if one looks only at benefits and ignores the costs (i.e., even the purely economic costs, leaving out the imponderables that could never be priced in dollars). The economic concept of retribution through fines and restitution for minor property crimes is still applied in modern societies. From a strictly economic standpoint, crime does benefit a society, e.g., through the accumulation of wealth and its profitable reinvestment, regardless of how such wealth was acquired. Even bribery and corruption (e.g., the Lockheed scandals) can produce benefits to national economies. Economic crimes (e.g., international operations in trade and currencies), however, usually damage the economies of all the countries concerned and benefit only corporate or individual offenders. Unfortunately, criminal justice and crime prevention cannot be considered only in economic and cost-benefit terms, because of their ethical, social, and political implications. Crime prevention planners must consider all these issues, along with how resources will be used and what must be paid to achieve planning objectives.