IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jbcoan/v10y2019i01p95-123_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Estimates of Law Enforcement Costs by Crime Type for Benefit-Cost Analyses

Author

Listed:
  • Hunt, Priscillia Evelyne
  • Saunders, Jessica
  • Kilmer, Beau

Abstract

Crime is an important outcome in many social policy evaluations. Benefits to society from preventing crime are based on avoiding victimization and freeing criminal justice system resources. For the latter, analysts need information about the marginal cost of policing for different types of crime across jurisdictions; however, this information is not readily available. This paper details key economic concepts relevant to law enforcement services, and then combines publicly available police expenditure data with insights from observational and time-diary studies to generate state-level, crime-specific, average variable cost estimates for crime-response services conducted by police by crime type. Since there is considerable uncertainty concerning various parameters underpinning these calculations, we use Monte Carlo simulation methods to incorporate the uncertainty into our estimates. This study finds that the U.S. population-weighted average variable cost of law enforcement response per police-reported Part 1 violent crime is $10,900, ranging from $6900 to $15,400 at the 10th and 90th percentiles, respectively. For a Part 1 property crime, the equivalent figure is $1300, with a range from $700 to $1700.

Suggested Citation

  • Hunt, Priscillia Evelyne & Saunders, Jessica & Kilmer, Beau, 2019. "Estimates of Law Enforcement Costs by Crime Type for Benefit-Cost Analyses," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(1), pages 95-123, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jbcoan:v:10:y:2019:i:01:p:95-123_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2194588818000192/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    RePEc Biblio mentions

    As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:
    1. > Law and Economics > Economics of Crime > Crime Prevention > Police Funding

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jorge Luis Garcia & Frederik Bennhoff & Duncan Ermini Leaf & James J. Heckman, 2021. "The Dynastic Benefits of Early Childhood Education," Working Papers 2021-033, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    2. Castillo-Manzano, José I. & Castro-Nuño, Mercedes & Lopez-Valpuesta, Lourdes, 2024. "Planning traffic surveillance in Spain: How to optimize the management of police resources to reduce road fatalities," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    3. Michael Mueller-Smith & Benjamin Pyle & Caroline Walker, 2023. "Estimating the Impact of the Age of Criminal Majority: Decomposing Multiple Treatments in a Regression Discontinuity Framework," Working Papers 23-01, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    4. Wheeler, Andrew Palmer & Reuter, Sydney, 2020. "Redrawing hot spots of crime in Dallas, Texas," SocArXiv nmq8r, Center for Open Science.
    5. Nathaniel J. Glasser & Harold A. Pollack & Megan L. Ranney & Marian E. Betz, 2022. "Economics and Public Health: Two Perspectives on Firearm Injury Prevention," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 704(1), pages 44-69, November.
    6. Chong Peng & Weizeng Sun & Xi Zhang, 2022. "Crime under the Light? Examining the Effects of Nighttime Lighting on Crime in China," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-20, December.
    7. Carter, Jeremy G. & Mohler, George & Raje, Rajeev & Chowdhury, Nahida & Pandey, Saurabh, 2021. "The Indianapolis harmspot policing experiment," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jbcoan:v:10:y:2019:i:01:p:95-123_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/bca .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.