| Abstract: |
We estimate that the total costs of crime in New Zealand in 2003/04 amounted
to $9.1 billion. Of this, the private sector incurred $7 billion in costs and
the public sector $2.1 billion. Offences against private property are the most
common crimes but offences against the person are the most costly, accounting
for 45% of the total estimated costs of crime. Empirically-based measures like
those presented here – the total and average costs of crime by category – are
a useful aid to policy analysis around criminal justice operations and
settings. However, care needs to be taken when interpreting these results
because they rely considerably on assumptions, including the assumed volume of
actual crime, and the costs that crime imposes on victims. This difficulty in
constructing robust estimates also implies that care should be taken not to
draw conclusions about whether the Government should be putting more or less
resources into any specific categories of crime, based on their relative costs
alone. |