The Valuation of Offences

Abstract

Up to this point our policy has been to develop results using the absolute minimum number of assumptions regarding the social valuation of changes in criminal activity. In the preceding chapter, however, we were forced to modify this stance in order to explore the usefulness for policy of the empirical work under discussion. Our main concern in this chapter, then, is to enumerate and evaluate the gains and losses to society as a whole from these changes. We shall see that the question turns to a considerable extent on whose gains and losses are to count and how much.