Why Crime Matters, and What to Do About It
In this paper, Jennifer Doleac describes what is known about crime trends in the US and outlines the best evidence to date on the effectiveness of various approaches to reducing crime through prevention, deterrence, and rehabilitation.
Crime in the US rose during the 1980s and early 1990s before declining steadily until 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, homicides, shootings, and motor vehicle thefts spiked, but by late 2023, overall rates of homicides and shootings had returned to their pre-pandemic levels. Because less serious offenses such as carjackings are much more difficult to track with nationwide data systems, we currently have an incomplete picture of how those crimes have trended in recent years across the country. Certain types of crime remain high, however, and Doleac emphasizes that crime continues to disproportionately affect certain urban areas and communities.
Doleac considers the costs of crime on victims and communities through both direct and indirect channels. Direct victim costs encompass medical expenses, cash or property losses, lost earnings, and pain and suffering. In addition to directly affecting victims, crime indirectly affects broader communities through reduced property values, diminished business activity, reduced school attendance, and increased mental health issues like anxiety and depression arising from fear for personal safety and property.
The costs of crime also come in the form of resources devoted to law enforcement and punishment. The majority of such efforts are conducted by state and local governments, which spent 7.5 percent of their overall budgets on the criminal justice system in 2021, amounting to $274 billion. These funds cover the employment of law enforcement personnel, the costs of the judicial system, and the costs of housing prisoners in correctional facilities. The federal government contributes an additional $58 billion to criminal justice expenses annually, or 1.5 percent of its budget. Combining the direct—tangible and intangible—costs to victims with the costs of law enforcement and punishment, researchers estimate that this aggregate cost of crime in the United States (excluding indirect costs) totals $4.7–5.8 trillion each year.
Given the high cost of crime to victims and affected communities, it is important to allocate crime-prevention efforts to interventions with evidence of effectiveness. Doleac proposes three effective channels to address crime through, and examines the effective strategies in each one.
1. Preventing someone’s first interaction with the criminal justice system.
Studies across several cities have found that offering summer jobs for teens, which provides positive career exposure and mentorship, reduces future violent-crime arrests and lowers mortality due to gun violence. Additionally, cognitive behavioral therapy pushes individuals to think more deliberately about the relative costs and benefits of their actions, and has been proven to cause meaningful reductions in violent arrests and recidivism. Over the long term, investments in improving the health of children—such as removing lead from the environment and reducing air pollution—are extremely cost-effective, causing large improvements in educational attainment and reductions in criminal justice involvement.
2. Deterring crime in the community.
At the community level, Doleac proposes two main strategies for cost-effective crime deterrence. First, putting more police on the streets remains an effective, evidence-based way to reduce crime relatively quickly. Second, employing technology such as cameras, DNA databases, and blood-alcohol content monitors can enhance crime detection at a lower cost than increasing police personnel.
3. Rehabilitating people with past criminal justice involvement.
To enhance rehabilitation, erring toward leniency for first-time offenders—giving them a second chance to avoid a first criminal record—dramatically reduces recidivism. Doleac also recommends the broader use of electronic monitoring systems as an alternative to prison sentences. Making mental health care affordable and easier to access is also a smart crime-reduction strategy. Finally, bans on public benefits for those with a criminal record should be repealed, as these bans not only increase recidivism rates but also increase future criminal activity for children of parents with criminal records.
Doleac concludes by emphasizing the importance of three approaches in particular as the most likely to have meaningful effects: investing in early life interventions, including reducing young children’s exposure to lead; making better use of police and technology to detect and deter crime; and increasing access to mental health care for high-risk populations. As crime continues to be a challenge for communities across the United States, it is not only important to invest in crime prevention strategies, but to ensure those strategies are effective and well implemented.
Suggested Citation: Doleac, Jennifer., 2024. “Why Crime Matters, and What to do about it” In Strengthening America’s Economic Dynamism, edited by Melissa S. Kearney and Luke Pardue. Washington, DC: Aspen Institute. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13975447.