Crime in New Zealand - The Cost of Crime

The Cost of Crime

Crime imposes an enormous burden on the taxpayer. The Corrections Department estimates that one criminal with a lifetime of offending generates $3 million in costs to victims and taxpayers. On a national level, the cost of crime in 2004 was estimated at $9.1 billion. Two years later, it was estimated at $12.5 billion and is still going up despite the crime rate coming down. The cost to the taxpayer for Police, Courts, and Corrections is estimated at over $3.7 billion a year while additional costs for medical treatment and compensation of victims are incurred by the Ministry of Health and by ACC. This takes the burden on the taxpayer to about $5 billion a year while the remainder of the cost is borne by victims in the form of lost or damaged property, insurance costs and medical expenses.

The early identification and exposure to interventions designed to divert young men from criminal offending is clearly in the public interest. International evidence suggests that antisocial children and youth follow a developmental trajectory in which the antisocial acts they engage in become more serious. Early intervention strategies could save millions of dollars in subsequent incarceration costs. For instance, an intervention for a five-year-old who is aggressive, defiant and rule breaking is estimated to cost $5000 per case with a success rate of 70%. Antisocial behaviour at the age of 25 costs $20,000 per intervention, but with a much reduced success rate - 20% at most. But even for adults, if a rehabilitative programme could reform just one person in the high-risk range of re-offending, that success would be worth at least $500,000 of ‘benefit’ in the next five years alone - in the form of avoided costs to Police, Courts, Corrections and victims.