Wednesday, November 24, 2010

The Cost Of Crime - Do We Need More Deputies?

Research Based Analyzer Answers What Happens If Law Enforcement Is Reduced

LABELLE, FL. -- "Hidden in Plain Sight: What Cost-of-Crime Research Can Tell Us About Investing in Police"  is a new report from the Rand organization that illustrates what research has found about ramifications on adding more or subtracting from current law enforcement personnel, in terms of the true cost to the community.

It has been found that violent crimes are many time more costly to the community than thefts and burglaries, and a "crime calculator" has been developed that illustrates the true cost to community of it's criminal activities, based on it's own crime statistics.

The Rand paper summarizes existing research on the cost of crime and the effectiveness of police in preventing crime. As such, it translates what is in the social-science literature, providing nontechnical descriptions that highlight the approaches and limitations of existing studies.

It also demonstrates a method for comparing the costs of police personnel with the expected benefits generated by those police in terms of reduced crime by using two proposals - one involving force expansion and one involving force reduction - to illustrate the process.

An interactive cost of crime calculator, located at http://www.rand.org/ise/centers/quality_policing/cost-of-crime.html, allows the user to see how an increase or decrease in police personnel will affect community crime costs.

The full Rand report is at: http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2010/RAND_OP279.pdf

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