Crime Overview - The Cost Of Crime Control

If you believe that crime — heaven be thanked — doesn't affect you much, think again. You're paying for police and for police cars; for lawyers, judges, judges' gowns; for prisons, food, and prison guards — and the bills are going up. In 1982, the nation expended $35.8 billion in actual dollars, in 1999 $146.6 billion — that's a 309% increase in actual dollars. In constant dollars the 1982 expenditure was $64.0 billion and rose to $151.5 billion by 1999, a growth rate of 137%. Either way, the national response to a rising crime rate has brought rising costs. And the period shown does not yet reflect the events of 9/11/2001. After that date, expenditures on domestic security will spike even higher — but the data to chart those expenditures are not yet available.

Justice System Costs

Just the increase, in constant dollars, between 1982 and 1999, was $262 for every man, woman, and child. A family of four is paying somewhat over $1,000 a year for the increase in crime-control expenditures. And those increases have not purchased a greater sense of security. On the day that this was written (October 7, 2002), a sniper was killing people at random in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. A 13-year-old boy had just been hit. It's not surprising that there is little public resistance to steeply climbing expenditures on safety and all that it entails. The rise in per capita spending, in constant dollars, is shown in the small chart on the previous page.

The distribution of expenditures by major category — police protection, judicial and legal, and corrections — closely parallel the allocation of employment in the Justice System — suggesting that this is a people-intensive activity. The municipalities again expend the bulk of their money on policing. When looking at the judicial and legal system, the Federal Government edges out counties as the having the leading share. And the states, again, expend most of their resources on prisons.

Percent Distribution of Expenditures by Level of Government and Activity, 1999

	Percent of Total	Percent of Sector
			Police	Judicial and Legal	Corrections
			Protection
Federal	17.2	54.0	31.1	14.9
States	36.0	16.8	22.5	60.6
Counties	22.1	35.5	30.0	34.5
Municipalities	24.7	84.3	8.6	7.2
Total	100.0	44.0	22.2	33.8

Nearly 47% of all justice dollars are spent at the local level (counties and municipalities combined). The states participate principally in maintaining prisons, although they have a policing functions as well (State Police, Texas constables) and operate their own level of the judiciary. Each level is mirrored by the Federal Government. Its police forces are the FBI; the armed agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; the Border Patrol; the Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachments (LEDETS); Treasury Agents; and assorted other marshals — not least airport security forces, of late. The Federal Govern-ment's judicial branch includes, most prominently, the Supreme Court. And the prison of prisons in this country is the Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

The armed forces of the United States are not engaged in law enforcement activity, indeed are prohibited from doing so by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (and its amendments) which expressly prohibits the military from "executing the law."

Each of the major parts of the Justice System will be covered, in more detail, later.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 2000, downloaded from http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/.