As I read the City Journal – https://www.city-journal.org/article/crime-disorder-safety-affordability-cost-cities?skip=1 – I found this paragraph: “They then provided estimates for 13 offense categories. For example, the direct or tangible costs of a single murder exceeded $1.2 million. The total cost of a murder to society—once intangible and crime career harms are included—came in just under $9 million. Murder, for obvious reasons, is an outlier. But other crimes are far from cheap and happen more often: the social cost of a rape exceeds $240,000; an aggravated assault, just over $107,000; and a robbery, just over $42,000.”
I’ve had Crim courses dropped on me when nobody who was more enthusiastic about the topic wanted the class. I’m uncomfortable with criminology as a science because the definitions of crime and criminal change with time and location. It’s really hard to teach a science class where the definitions aren’t consistent over time. Still, if you can teach an introductory crim class, you do know a little about the topic.
As I’m writing this, I’ve just read that the bastard who knifed Irina Zarutska on a train in Charleston SC was found not competent to stand trial. I recall the M’Naghton Rule – but rather than make a mistake, here’s the definition from Cornell Law School: “Under this M’Naghten test, all defendants are presumed to be sane unless they can prove that–at the time of committing the criminal act–the defendant’s state of mind caused them to (1) not know what they were doing when they committed said act, or (2) that they knew what they were doing, but did not know that it was wrong. A common example for the second prong is if a person is acting on orders from “God.”
In a way, I have to agree. Anyone who doesn’t realize it’s wrong to take a knife to a pretty little blonde is bugnuts. (I will continue to use these specific psychological terms – after all, I am a demographer and a sociologist, not a head shrinker.)
But it isn’t just wasting pretty blondes – now I can reference an economist calculating that the murder costs society 9 million. I don’t care if the bastard can’t tell right from wrong. We can’t afford people like him walking around any neighborhood.
An aggravated assault costs society $107,000. Generally, aggravated assault is assault with a deadly weapon, or assault in connection with a more serious crime. Each robbery costs society $42,000 – and the average take to the robber, in 2019, was $1,797.
Of course, I read the blotter in the TVNews- our local police are more like social workers with pistols than Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral (and I like a society where they can afford to be polite and helpful). On the other hand, I’ve been looking at some data from El Salvador:
In El Salvador, they built one brand-new, minimum amenities prison, then made a strong effort to fill it up. I don’t know if the M’Naghton rule is applicable in El Salvador.
Leave a Reply