A Note on the Cost of Crime to Victims

Abstract

Hedonic pricing models have been used to infer the cost of crime by estimating property value differences in high versus low crime areas. However, previous studies have been unable to disentangle the cost of individual crimes. This note reports on an attempt to estimate the cost of individual crimes by examining the pain, suffering and fear endured by crime victims. Actual victim injury rates are combined with jury awards in personal injury accident cases to estimate pain, suffering and fear. Crime-related death rates are combined with estimates of the value of life to arrive at monetary values for the risk of death. Not only does this approach yield crime-specific cost estimates, but these estimates are quite consistent with the property value methods of valuing aggregate crime.