The Costs of Crime and Punishment

Diversity has become a value we cherish. Politically, societies like to have the whole spectrum of their respective populace mapped, their entire range of communities and cultures. However, not all diversity is appreciated. The intranational diversity of schooling accomplishments, as measured by PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) or TIMMS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) scores, is often seen to reflect unequal educational opportunities, disparate or partially inadequate educational facilities, or poverty and social misfortune. Analogous issues arise in the field of public health, where health and life expectancy is related to education and income; or in the field of public policy, where the diversity of income of families is growing to levels which threaten to rip apart nations and to endanger democratic structures; or, to mention another issue, in the field of crime, the topic of this review. Crime rates differ across nations, often by a factor of 1:100. In Mexico, robberies are estimated to exceed 500 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, while Japan is recorded to have a rate of no more than 4 cases. However, crime rates differ from crime to crime. Assaults in Mexico are estimated to have a rate of some 200 cases, while Japan has not a rate of 2 (as one might expect from the robbery example above) but of roughly 50 cases. Western developed nations normally have lower recorded crime rates than countries of emerging economies or of undeveloped countries, provided we stick to offenses that are illegal and included in crime statistics (such as those collated by the UNODC). But even here the differences are substantial. Some of these differences may have to do with definitional matters, some with the underlying causes of crime, some with crime cultures, and some with policing, apprehension and punishment. Crime is associated with costs. These costs, monetary or immaterial, are borne by the victims of crime, by the general public, and by the offenders themselves. We may distinguish between costs that are directly caused by crime (e.g., damage, harm, losses, income forgone, etc.), indirectly associated with crime (e.g., preventive measures of a technical kind, behavioral or psychological changes, or costs tied to insurance policies, all pertaining to potential victims), and direct and indirect costs associated with policing, apprehension and punishment (borne by the general public, the criminals themselves, or the community to which the criminals are perceived to belong). Because costs may be seen as income, one would have to look at them from various angles. For the victim, costs generally cannot be offset by the gains of the criminal (in a Robin Hood type fashion). Furthermore, we normally do not experience a mere “change of ownership,” so to speak, but frequently a destruction of values—of life, of health, of property—which cannot be replaced. Lastly, the costs of policing, apprehension and punishment are not simply income sources for people employed as police or correction