Accounting for crime - wasted appropriations for the proposed crime bill in Congress and the economic of crime - Column

National Review, July 11, 1994 by Ed Rubenstein

The crime bill currently making its way through Congress is full of programs that will have little impact on criminal activity. Its most expensive item - $8 billion over five years - will fund cultural, educational, and recreational programs for disadvantaged youth, including that famous midnight basketball league. If social spending were the answer there would be no crime problem.

Indeed, the same can be said of criminal-justice spending, which last year absorbed 1.57 per cent of GDP, or more than three times its share of GDP as of 1950. The relative ineffectiveness of this public-sector outlay has forced businesses and individuals to spend an additional $52 billion each year on security. Private security guards - 1.5 million in 1990 - outnumber police officers by nearly three to one.

The reason the results of public anti-crime policy have been so dismal is that officials have forgotten the relationship between the crime rate and the cost of crime to the criminal.

"Expected time in prison" reflects the average prison sentence for serious offenses, adjusted for the probability that offenders are actually arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sent to prison. The typical sentence for burglary, for example, is 13 months. But because only 1.2 per cent of burglaries actually result in an arrest and incarceration, the expected punishment from a burglar's perspective is only 4.8 days in jail.

By the same sort of calculation the expected punishment for murder is only 1.8 years. A rapist can expect 60 days. The average "price" for stealing a car is only 1.5 days in jail.

The inverse relationship between expected punishment and the crime rate has been demonstrated empirically. Between 1950 and 1974 the expected punishment for all serious crimes fell from 24 days to 5.5 days. The crime rate rose by 300 per cent over the same period. During the 1980s Congress created mandatory minimum sentences for certain violent crimes and drug offenses, urging the states to do likewise. As the expected time in prison rose, the crime rate actually declined.

How to increase the price of crime? The Senate version of the crime bill contains funding for an additional 100,000 police officers. More cops will indeed mean a higher arrest rate, assuming Washington allows the new recruits to make arrests. But more arrests will merely clog an already overburdened penal system - and produce no rise in expected punishment - unless funds are also made available for courts, a point totally ignored in the current legislation.

Keeping career criminals off the street is arguably to the key to fighting crime. Liberals complain that a "Three strikes and you're out" policy would be too expensive. A little cost-benefit analysis may be in order. The Rand Corporation reports that the average professional criminal commits between 187 and 287 crimes a year, at a cost to society of $2,300 per crime - more than $400,000 per year. By comparison, keeping one of these fellows behind bars for a year costs taxpayers a mere $25,000. Prison is a bargain for the good guys.

            CATCHING CRIMINALS OR TAXPAYERS?

       Serious Crimes    Expected          Criminal-Justice
           Per 100         Days             Expenditures
          Population     In Prison     $ Billion    % of GDP

1950         1.2            24.0       $ 1.415        0.49%
1954         1.4            22.5         2.054        0.55
1965         2.4            12.1         4.573        0.65
1975         4.9             5.5        14.954        0.94
1980         6.0             6.1        45.607        1.05
1989         5.7             8.5        60.980        1.24
1991         5.9             8.0        74.000        1.34
1993         NA              NA        100.000        1.57

Source: National Center For Policy Analysis, Dept. of Justice.