THE COST OF CRIME

Taranaki Daily News, 17 November 1926, Page 11

THE COST OF CRIME

EXPENSE OF AMERICA’S WAVE

EQUAL TO EUROPEAN DEBT. -

San Francisco, Oct. 12

America’s most expensive luxury is crime, for statisticians estimate that crime costs the United. States, in round numbers, about £2,600,000,000 a year. The loss in loot alone is placed at about £700,000,000 annually. The police charges, insurance charges, prosecuting charges and economic loss in diverted man-power make up £1,300,000,000 more. Commenting on the crime wave expense, the Minneapolis Tribune says: “This is something to think about. Each year crime costs America a sum roughly equal to the entire European debt owed America. Each year crime eosts us better than twice what it costs us to run the government. Put differently, we could run our government for two and a half years on our annual crime bill alone. Im any one year we spend ten times as much for crime as we have spent altogether for our highways. Were the money we spent on crime returned to us for but one year, we could have a network of highways just ten time as fine as the one we now have without paying out an extra cent.

“Could we abolish crime in it§ entirety the money thus saved would in two years wipe out our national debt. In seven years more it would wipe out both the British and French national debts as well. In ten years more it would have wiped out the German reparations bill in addition.

“Crime is estimated to cost each inhabitant of the United states £l7 a year. Thus the father of a family of five children is likely to pay out, although he does,not know it, at least £ll9 a year as a crime tax alone. “The president of the Chicago Crime Commission, Charles R. Holden, recently declared that Chicago could afford to pay ils 30,000 crooks not less that £4OOO a year, each to retire from business and go elsewhere. And Chicago would then have what it has not now—security. “America is supposed to be efficient. Yet how can a country call itself efficient when it, calmly accepts an annual £2.000,000,600 waste, and without bestirring itself to any exceptional efforts to effect at least a partial elimination of that waste?”