Unit Costs of Delinquent Acts for Use in Economic Evaluations.

This study aims to provide a method for estimating the unit costs per perpetrator of 14 delinquent acts common in the Netherlands and included in self reported delinquency questionnaires: robbery/theft with violence, simple theft/pickpocketing, receiving stolen goods, destruction/vandalism of private or public property, disorderly conduct/discrimination, arson, cybercrime, simple and aggravated assault, threat, forced sexual contact, unauthorised driving, driving under the influence, dealing in soft drugs, and dealing in hard drugs. METHODS: Information on government expenditures and the incidence of crimes, number of perpetrators, and the percentage of solved and reported crimes was obtained from the national database on crime and justice of the Research and Documentation Centre of the Ministry of Justice and Security, Statistics Netherlands, and the Council for the Judiciary in the Netherlands. We applied a top-down micro costing approach to calculate the point estimate of the unit costs for each of the delinquent acts and, subsequently, estimated the mean (SD) unit costs for each of the delinquent acts by taking random draws from a triangular distribution while taking into account a 10% uncertainty associated with the associated point estimate. RESULTS: The mean (SD) unit costs per delinquent act per perpetrator ranged between EUR495 (EUR1.30) for "Driving under the influence" and EUR33,813 (EUR78.30) for a "Cybercrime". These unit costs may be considered a...
Source: Journal of Mental Health Policy and Economics - Category: Psychiatry Tags: J Ment Health Policy Econ Source Type: research