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The economic and social costs of crime against individuals and households 2003/04

The first estimates of the costs of crime were published in 2000 by the Home Office in 'The Social And Economic Costs Of Crime'. It was recognised in this report that, although the estimates were 'state of the art' at that time, methodological improvements could be made in some areas. This report updates the estimates using improved methods of estimating.

Title: The economic and social costs of crime against individuals and households 2003/04
Authors: Richard Dubourg, Joe Hamed, Jamie Thorns
Series: Home Office On-Line Report 30/05
Number of pages: 46
Date published: June 2005
Availability: Download full report PDF 326Kb

The report comes in 3 parts:

• Estimates of the costs of crime against household and individuals

• Developments in the estimating of the costs of crime

• Estimates of the costs of the impact of violent crimes upon their victims

Costs of crime against individuals and households

• The original estimates of the costs of crime against individuals and households, published in 'The Economic And Social Costs Of Crime' (2000) have been updated on the basis of methodological and data improvements.

• Detailed breakdowns for the costs of a number of crimes can be found in the main report. They are summarised below

Unit costs for crimes

Crime	Average cost (2003)
Violence against the person Homicide Serious wounding Other wounding	£10,407 £1,458,975 £21,422 £8,056
Sexual offences	£31,438
Common assault	£1,440
Robbery	£7,282
Burglary in a dwelling	£3,268
Theft Not vehicle Of a vehicle From a vehicle Attempted vehicle theft	£844 £634 £4,138 £858 £510
Criminal damage	£866

• The revised estimates of the unit costs of crime against individuals and households exhibit a broadly similar pattern to the costs estimated in 2000.

• The most costly crimes are those with a large estimated emotional and physical impact - homicide, wounding, robbery and sexual offences.

• Serious wounding is seen to be less costly than previously estimated, while other wounding is more costly. The most costly violent crime is now estimated to be rape, which has increased significantly since 2000.

• Violent crime and emotional and physical impacts of crime account for a large fraction of the total cost of crime against individuals and households.

• The total current burden cost of crime against individuals and households in 2003/04 was around £36.2bn. This represents a decrease of around 9% from the estimated total cost in 2000 after accounting for inflation and methodological improvements. The fall in total crime has been partially offset by the change in the mix of crimes and increases in some unit cost estimates.

• Considerable uncertainty remains around any estimate of the total number of sexual offences, and the relationship between sexual offences and recorded sexual offences remains uncertain.

Developments in the estimates of the costs of crime in England and Wales

'The Economic And Social Costs Of Crime', published in 2000, presented the first estimates of the cost of crime in England and Wales. Since then, an ongoing programme of research has been established to improve these estimates. This section presents the results of the first set of updates to the original figures.

• The updates considered in this report relate to:

  • The calculation of the costs of violent crime against individuals

  • The calculation of costs of the criminal justice system, especially relating to sentencing

  • Revised 'multipliers' for estimating the total volume of crime

  • Incorporation of more up-to-date data sources.

• The major effect of changes in the calculation of the costs of violent crime against individuals is to reduce the cost of crimes classed as 'serious wounding', and to increase the cost of those classed as 'other wounding'. The health and lost output costs of sexual offences are also increased relative to previous estimates.

• Revisions to the calculation of criminal justice system costs provide more accurate estimates of the cost of police time, and more appropriate allocation of CJS costs for violence. They also produce estimates of unit costs which reflect the future cost liability of certain sentences of court orders when they are of more than one year's duration (e.g. custody). These unit costs are more appropriate for use in cost-benefit analysis than previous ones.

• Revised multipliers take into account recent changes to police recording practice, especially the National Crime Recording Standard introduced in 2000, which has in most cases greatly reduced the disparity between estimated total volumes of crime and numbers of crimes recorded.

Estimating the cost of the impacts of violent crime on victims

This section presents the results of the research relating to the improved estimation of the victim costs of violent crime.

• The victim costs estimated in this report are:

  • the emotional and physical ('intangible') costs to victims; the costs of lost output through a victim of violence being required to take time off work to convalesce

  • the health costs of treating injuries and other health impacts of violence.

• The crime types considered in this report are wounding, rape, sexual assault, common assault and robbery. This is the first time separate estimates for rape and sexual assault have been possible.

• The methodologies employed are based on application of the Quality-Adjusted Life-Year (QALY) concept developed in the health services literature, and information on the health impacts of violent crimes reported by respondents to the British Crime Survey. This compares with the previous approach, which generally involved transferring values estimated for the Department for Transport in the context of serious non-fatal road injuries.

• The revised estimates indicate that the costs of wounding are significantly lower than previously estimated. This reflects a more accurate treatment of the nature of injuries that result from wounding. The revised estimate for sexual assault is comparable with the previous estimate for all sexual offences, including rape. However, the new methodology demonstrates that rape is significantly more costly than other sexual assaults, highlighting the importance of using dedicated evidence when appraising or evaluating targeted interventions.

Getting a copy

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Last update: 05 July 2005