Indicators and cost estimates

What: Indicators help in evaluating the success of an organization or of a particular activity. Cost estimate calculations are useful in revealing the cost-benefit ration of specific policies or activities.

Why: Indicators and cost estimate tools are useful in identifying and determining the success of criminal justice systems or criminal justice policies, and can assist policy makers in formulating decisions related to the level and distribution of resources, and in setting priorities and strategies.

Methodology: By mixing methods drawing from sociology and economics, various indirect costs can be estimated, such as production losses caused by specific crime types, costs of society from lost economic output, and the physical and emotional impact of crime on the victims. The combination of using administrative data, and extrapolations with qualitative interviews also makes it possible to estimate the more direct costs which accumulate in the social, health and legal sectors.

HEUNI’s work has resulted in:

Indicators for the assessment of public confidence in criminal justice and fear of crime. These indicators can be used to measure confidence in criminal justice, and to support the development of more inclusionary criminal justice policies designed to secure commitment to the rule of law and thus compliance with the law. A survey-based indicator as well as tools for presenting and interpreting the indicators have been developed. HEUNI report 70

Cost estimate methods regarding rehabilitation of trafficking victims: Development of a cost calculation method at the municipal level to better estimate and understand the costs of the rehabilitation of trafficking victims. STROM II - CBSS

A joint research project with the Council of Europe, the Office of the Government Plenipotentiary for Equal Treatment of Poland and HEUNI (2013-2015) which assessed the direct and indirect societal costs of domestic and sexual violence against women in Poland. The study focused on the costs that public authorities and institutions incur in providing services including the criminal justice system, health care, and social sector, and the costs from loss of economic output due to homicide, absence from work, or incarceration. For more information contact heuni(at)om.fi