PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Iowa State team calculates societal costs of five major crimes; finds murder at $17.25 million

Study also calculates costs of rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault and burglary

Iowa State team calculates societal costs of five major crimes; finds murder at $17.25 million
2010-10-07
(Press-News.org) AMES, Iowa -- Murder takes an obvious toll on society in terms of the loss of human life, but what does it actually cost each time there's a murder? It's about $17.25 million according a recent Iowa State University study.

Matt DeLisi, an ISU associate professor of sociology and director of the criminal justice program, led a team of five Iowa State graduate students on the study of 654 convicted and incarcerated murderers. Expanding upon earlier monetization estimates, they calculated the costs of five crimes -- murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault and burglary -- in terms of the victim costs, criminal justice system costs, lost productivity estimates for both the victim and the criminal, and estimates on the public's resulting willingness to pay to prevent future violence.

"The person who invented this is Mark Cohen (a professor of economics, ethics and corporate social responsibility at Vanderbilt University), and he published an article back in 1998 that was called 'The Monetary Value of Saving a High-Risk Youth,'" said DeLisi, who has published several books and journal articles on delinquency and criminals. "He's the one that pioneered this monetization approach where we can say, 'What do offenders cost over time?'

"And I've done some analysis in recent years along with Cohen and other researchers that incorporates this new wrinkle, which is this willingness to pay estimates," he continued. "And what we find is that the public is remarkably balanced in terms of crime control. We aren't shy about punishing people, but we are also very humanistic and want to prevent crime and rehabilitate offenders. Even if society is very hard on crime, or are crime-control oriented, it seems we'd rather pay money up front than let it all unfold and pay for it later."

Iowa State sociology graduate students Anna Kosloski, Molly Sween, Emily Hachmeister, Matt Moore and Alan Drury joined DeLisi on the study. Their paper, titled "Murder by numbers: monetary costs imposed by a sample of homicide offenders," was published in the August 2010 edition of The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology.

The study uses data from one of DeLisi's previous studies (2003) on 654 convicted and incarcerated homicide offenders in eight states -- Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas. In addition to the per murder cost ($17,252, 656), the researchers calculated that the most violent offenders singly produced costs greater than $150 million.

"That each murder costs more than $17.25 million still does not convey the true costs imposed by homicide offenders in the current sample," the authors wrote. "Since the mean homicide conviction was more than one, the average murderer in these analyses actually imposed costs approaching $24 million. For the offender who murdered nine victims, the total murder-specific costs were $155,457,083!"

The ISU researchers also calculated costs of rape ($448,532), armed robbery ($335,733), aggravated assault ($145,379) and burglary ($41,288).

While research attaching cost estimates to heinous crimes may appear may appear a bit cold in nature, DeLisi says it's actually conducted with prevention in mind.

"This area of research has really been run with prevention researchers," he said. "That's because what they find is that even if a prevention program is very expensive -- and most of them are actually shockingly inexpensive -- they're still more cost effective than allowing these careers to unfold."

DeLisi sees the expensive monetary costs associated with incarcerating murderers supporting both sides of the political fence when it comes to crime.

"I think that the left and the right are both right and wrong on crime," he said. "Where the right maybe has to bend is in acknowledging the benefits of prevention. It's simply more humanistic and it's just smarter to invest up front, and the costs are so much smaller than allowing it to unfold.

"On the flip side, conservatives are absolutely correct in noting how bad some offenders are," he continued. "And here's where liberals generally aren't as strong in admitting how bad these offenders are. They really are [bad], and when you can bring out costs that show this, you can really see it."



INFORMATION:



DeLisi was also one of seven researchers who authored a recent study that explored a topic related to early delinquency. Their study, "Psychiatric Correlates of Bullying in the United States: Findings from a National Sample," was published in the September 2010 Psychiatric Quarterly.




[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Iowa State team calculates societal costs of five major crimes; finds murder at $17.25 million

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Hormone acting as 'molecular glue' could boost plant immune systems

2010-10-07
EAST LANSING, Mich. — The discovery of a hormone acting like molecular glue could hold a key to bolstering plant immune systems and understanding how plants cope with environmental stress. The study, which is featured in the Oct. 6 issue of Nature, reveals how the plant hormone jasmonate binds two proteins together – an emerging new concept in hormone biology and protein chemistry. The study also identifies the receptor's crystal structure to provide the first molecular view of how plants ward off attacks by insects and pathogens. In short, the work explains how a highly ...

Patient-provider language barriers linked to worse diabetes control

2010-10-07
Patients who cannot discuss their diabetes with a doctor in their own language may have poorer health outcomes, even when interpreter services are available, according to a new study by researchers at UCSF and the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. The study found that, among Latino diabetes patients with limited English skills, those seen by non-Spanish speaking doctors were nearly twice as likely to have poor control of their blood sugar than those whose doctors spoke Spanish. Findings will appear in the January 2011 issue of the Journal of General Internal ...

Vitamin D-ficiency common among orthopaedic surgery

2010-10-07
Forty-three percent of patients scheduled to undergo orthopaedic surgery have insufficient levels of vitamin D and two out of five of those patients had levels low enough to place them at risk for metabolic bone disease, according to a study published this month in the October 6th issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS). According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) , vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium and is essential for bone growth and bone remodeling. Without sufficient vitamin D, bones can become thin, brittle or misshapen. People can obtain ...

Study provides data that can inform Atlantic sturgeon recovery efforts

Study provides data that can inform Atlantic sturgeon recovery efforts
2010-10-07
STONY BROOK, NY, October 6, 2010 - A first-of-its-kind study that tracked the oceanic migrations of adult Atlantic sturgeon that were caught and tagged in the Hudson River discovered that these fish move vast distances in the Atlantic Ocean, traveling as far south as Georgia and as far north as Nova Scotia, Canada. The findings indicate that recovery of Atlantic sturgeon fisheries will need to address long-range oceanic threats to the species in addition to local measures closer to spawning grounds. These results are particularly timely given the announcement on October ...

NASA loosens GRIP on Atlantic hurricane season

NASA loosens GRIP on Atlantic hurricane season
2010-10-07
NASA wrapped up one of its largest hurricane research efforts ever last week after nearly two months of flights that broke new ground in the study of tropical cyclones and delivered data that scientists will now be able to analyze for years to come. While the 2010 hurricane season has been a rather quiet one for coastal dwellers, the churning meteorology of the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea seemed to cooperate well with the science goals of Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment. Those goals were designed to answer some of the most fundamental ...

Keeping blood pressure in check may benefit some African-Americans with kidney disease

2010-10-07
DALLAS – Oct. 7, 2010 – Keeping blood pressure at a low level in African-Americans with kidney disease may slow the progression of the condition in patients with proteinuria, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers found in a national study published in The New England Journal of Medicine. In the African-American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension, or AASK, trial of 1,094 patients, researchers found that keeping blood pressure readings at about 130/80 mm Hg reduced the risk of disease progression by 27 percent for patients with protein in the urine (proteinuria), ...

Breast density linked to increased risk of subsequent breast cancer

2010-10-07
PHILADELPHIA — Researchers at Kaiser Permanente have found that patients with a very early form of breast cancer (ductal carcinoma in situ or DCIS) who have higher mammographic density may be at increased risk for subsequent breast cancer, especially in the breast opposite to the one with the initial cancer. These study results are published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Mammographic density refers to the proportion of the breast that appears dense on a mammogram; it is one of the strongest ...

Half-time gamblers give stock market insight

2010-10-07
Computer-modelled comparison of online football gamblers' behaviour during play and during half-time shows distinct real-time differences, begging the question what motivates betting behaviour when play is not underway? Research published today, Thursday 7 October 2010, in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society), details how researchers from Trinity College Dublin have analysed data and identified betting trends during the 2007-08 Champions' League Tournament. Using a complete dataset from Betfair.com, drawn from bets ...

Study shows faith-based interventions can encourage exercise in older African-American women

2010-10-07
In a randomized controlled study based in Los Angeles, California, encouraging African-American women aged 60 or over to exercise, in conjunction with scripture reading and group prayer, led to a 78% increase in steps per week, equivalent to about three extra miles. This increase was four times greater than in the control group who were also encouraged to exercise but with no faith based interventions. The results are published today in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Older African-American women are the least physically active race-sex subgroup in the ...

Poverty grows in suburbs, but social services don't keep up

2010-10-07
VIDEO: University of Chicago Professor Scott Allard talks about the problems the poor face in getting help in the suburbs. Click here for more information. Poverty has grown in America's suburbs during the recent economic downturn, but poor people in many suburban communities are finding it hard to get the help they need, a report by University of Chicago researchers shows. "Many suburbs have seen significant expansion in the number of poor persons over the last several years, ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

H.E.S.S. collaboration detects the most energetic cosmic-ray electrons and positrons ever observed

Novel supernova observations grant astronomers a peek into the cosmic past

Association of severe maternal morbidity with subsequent birth

Herodotus' theory on Armenian origins debunked by first whole-genome study

Women who suffer pregnancy complications have fewer children

Home testing kits and coordinated outreach substantially improve colorectal cancer screening rates

COVID-19 vaccine reactogenicity among young children

Generalizability of clinical trials of novel weight loss medications to the US adult population

Wildfire smoke exposure and incident dementia

Health co-benefits of China's carbon neutrality policies highlighted in new review

Key brain circuit for female sexual rejection uncovered

Electrical nerve stimulation eases long COVID pain and fatigue

ASTRO issues update to clinical guideline on radiation therapy for rectal cancer

Mount Sinai opens the Hamilton and Amabel James Center for Artificial Intelligence and Human Health to transform health care by spearheading the AI revolution

Researchers develop tools to examine neighborhood economic effects on spinal cord injury outcomes

Case Western Reserve University awarded $1.5 million to study vaginal bacterial linked to serious health risks

The next evolution of AI begins with ours

Using sunlight to recycle black plastics

ODS FeCrAl alloys endure liquid metal flow at 600 °C resembling a fusion blanket environment

A genetic key to understanding mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome

The future of edge AI: Dye-sensitized solar cell-based synaptic device

Bats’ amazing plan B for when they can’t hear

Common thyroid medicine linked to bone loss

Vaping causes immediate effects on vascular function

A new clock to structure sleep

Study reveals new way to unlock blood-brain barrier, potentially opening doors to treat brain and nerve diseases

Viking colonizers of Iceland and nearby Faroe Islands had very different origins, study finds

One in 20 people in Canada skip doses, don’t fill prescriptions because of cost

Wildlife monitoring technologies used to intimidate and spy on women, study finds

Around 450,000 children disadvantaged by lack of school support for color blindness

[Press-News.org] Iowa State team calculates societal costs of five major crimes; finds murder at $17.25 million
Study also calculates costs of rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault and burglary