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Pain, Suffering, and Jury Awards: A Study of the Cost of Crime to Victims

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Mark A. Cohen
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Abstract

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Previous studies of the cost of crime have focused on the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by victims. This approach significantly underestimates the cost of crime to victims by ignoring the pain, suffering, and fear caused by crime. Other studies have attempted to infer the cost of crime by estimating property value differences in high versus low crime areas. However, this approach does not permit one to determine the cost of individual crimes. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the cost of individual crimes by examining the pain, suffering, and fear endured by crime victims. Actual victim injury rates are combined with jury awards in personal injury accident cases to estimate monetary values for pain, suffering, and fear. I combine crime-related death rates with estimates of the value of life to arrive at monetary values for the risk of death. My estimate of the aggregate annual cost of crime to victims of FBI index crimes is $92.6 billion. These estimates are shown to have several direct policy applications.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , 1988 , pp. 537 - 555
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

Work on this paper was begun while the author was a staff member at the U.S. Sentencing Commission in Washington, D.C. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Sentencing Commission or its staff. Nevertheless, the Commission's support for this project is greatly appreciated. I am also grateful to Michael K. Block, Philip J. Cook, Daryl A. Hellman, Ted R. Miller, Ilene H. Nagel, and William Rhodes for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Any remaining errors, however, are solely my responsibility. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Professor Cook, who not only provided many useful comments on earlier versions, but also suggested this area of research to the Sentencing Commission.

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