Economic and Social Cost of Crime

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

4. Economic and Social Costs of Crime Anticipation Security Insurance Property, lost output, health services, emotional and physical impact Consequence 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-UPRATE 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

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?

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. Miscellaneous offences Crimes of indecency Crimes of dishonesty Crimes of violence Vandalism and fire-raising Other crimes Total costs - Tree plot

14. Breakdown of the costs of crime

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

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 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

21. Reconviction rate over time Average annual number of reconvictions Reoffending Rates/Frequencies

22. Custodial Cohort Costs

23. 1% £6m

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

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

33. Violence Damage Other Dishonesty Sexual Size does matter? Prolific (3+ previous) £3.9 billion Very short termers £1.1 billion Long termers £59 million

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