This DataWatch estimates the costs and monetary value of lost quality of life due to death and nonfatal physical and psychological injury resulting from violent crime. In 1987 physical injury to people age twelve and older resulting from rape, robbery, assault, murder, and arson caused about $10 billion in potential health-related costs, including some unmet mental health care needs. It led to ...

“I’d rather be Hanged for a Sheep than a Lamb: The Unintended Consequences of ‘Three-Strikes’ Laws” Strong sentences are common “tough on crime” tool used to reduce the incentives for individuals to participate in criminal activity. However, the design of such policies often ignores other margins along which individuals interested in participating in crime may adjust. I use California’s Three S...

The City of Los Angeles Mayor’s Office Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD) program was conceived as a comprehensive response to gang violence. Unlike most approaches, suppression excluded from the primary model. Program services including community engagement, prevention intervention services, street-based violence interruption, were formally launched in late 2011. Strict geographic eli...

We examine the relationship between crime and local economic welfare in South Africa. Unlike previous studies, which use a much larger unit of analysis, we utilize data from 1066 police station jurisdictions. We find that inequality is strongly correlated with both property crime and violent crime. Once controls for the opportunity cost and benefits of crime participation are introduced, this c...

Studies on adult sex and violent offenders have found high rates of adolescent delinquency, while early delinquency has been shown to be significantly associated with adult offending. The examined subsample (n = 123) of a longitudinal prospective study (n = 6,315) includes all men who at the age of 19 had an entry in the criminal records. During the observation period of 34 years, 68.3% of the ...

While age is one of the most important correlates of an individual's risk of violent victimization, research regarding the victimization of adolescents is relatively meager. Using two well-known national data sources and an analytical framework guided by lifestyle/routine activities theories, we describe the relationships between activity involvement and the risk of assault and robbery victimiz...

OBJECTIVE Alcohol is more likely than any other drug to be involved in substance-related violence. In 2000 violence-related and self-directed injuries accounted for an estimated $37 billion and $33 billion in productivity losses and medical treatment, respectively. A review of emergency department data revealed violence and clinically identified trauma-related injuries have the strongest correl...

It is my intention in giving this paper to set the scene for the following papers and discussions. Crime, in the minds of most people, is becoming an increasingly serious problem. Whilst the majority of crimes are on the increase, it is those involving violence which cause us the most concern. However, that increase is not so apparent when we turn from the newspapers to hard statistics. From 19...