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Victim Costs and Consequences: A New Look

January 1996
Victim Costs and Consequences: A New Look documents the results of a 2-year multidisciplinary research effort to estimate the costs and consequences of personal crime for Americans. Personal crime is estimated to cost $105 billion annually in medical costs, lost earnings, and public program costs related to victim assistance. These tangible losses do not account for the full impact of crime on victims, however, because they ignore pain, suffering, and lost quality of life. Including pain, suffering, and the reduced quality of life increases the cost of crime to victims to an estimated $450 billion annually. Violent crime (including drunk driving and arson) accounts for $426 billion of this total, property crime $24 billion. These estimates exclude several crimes that were not included in this study but that also have large impacts, notably many forms of white collar crime (including personal fraud) and drug crimes.