ABSTRACT
In the history of criminology, it is not too many years since the first studies of the costs of crime emerged (Walker, 1992). Early research into the costs of crime typically focused on the direct costs of the crimes themselves, in terms of impacts on victims, and the costs of crime prevention, law enforcement and justice, with indirect costs being relegated to a secondary role, in part because of the inherent difficulties of measurement. However, researchers such as Mayhew (2003) and Brand and Price (2000) established that these indirect costs were indeed measurable (although with difficulty) and significant. More recently, the European Commission has issued a formalised approach entitled ‘Mainstreaming Methodology for Estimating the Costs of Crime’ (University of York, 2009), which aims to encourage a standard ‘costs of crime’ approach across European Union countries. Building on this history of research, the European Commission’s approach includes, in its ‘Costs as a consequence of crime’ section, some elements that would have been considered rather ‘third-order’ impacts in early attempts to measure the costs of crime. Together with ‘traditional’ elements such as property losses and medical and mental health care costs, they include productivity losses (e.g. the time lost from work by victims of crime), household services (additional costs imposed as a result of crime), lost school days, pain, suffering and lost quality of life, victim support services, tort claim expenses and ‘long-term consequences’.
