The cost of crime can be hard to quantify. Why crime rates go up and down can be even harder to get a handle on. However, the Common Sense Institute (CSI) in Arizona, a non-partisan research group, has taken a stab at what the cost of crime equates to $20.6 billion.
"It's about 4% of the state's value of the economy, the GDP in here in Arizona," Zachary Milne, Senior Economist and Research Analyst for CSI said. “These cost estimates really get at the sort of direct costs of crime. So you'd think the costs to victims, for medical bills, lost wages, cost to society, for first responders, adjudication and sanctioning and things like that.”
Milne says the report does not include what he calls second or third order costs of crime. These would be costs associated with crimes that are never reported to police and are never factored in FBI data, where CSI pulled the majority of their data on crime rates.
CSI developed for cost for crime for 2022. That's because it's the most up-to-date year that numbers on crime rates have been collected. It includes crimes like murder, robbery, and property crimes like car theft and arson.
Included in the 46-page report is a look at the rise and fall of Arizona's crime rates. Arizona's crime rates bottomed out to their lowest levels in 30 years in 2014. Since then, with some peaks and valleys in between, Arizona's crime has been steadily growing, according to CSI.
“Crime is a very complicated issue. There's a million different things that go into influencing it. There's certain evidence that we talk about in the paper that suggests, in some of these cities where you had very high profile police killings, that the police sort of reacted by pulling back on their policing behaviors in the area, and that had consequences for crime," Milne said.
The report also narrows down to the granule level by estimating the cost of crime per Arizonan in 2022 was nearly $2,800. Milne says the average taxpayer may not feel the brunt of that number; however, those who have become victimized certainly have financially and emotionally.
