REPORT ON THE COST OF CRIME

Authors

Herbert F, Taggart, University of Michigan

Abstract

The full title of the twelfth report of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement is "Report on the Cost of Crime and Criminal Justice in the United States." A more descriptive title, suggested by the actual content of the report, would be "The Economic Consequences of Crime." The report constitutes a volume of 657 pages, of which the report proper covers 453 pages, and various appendices make up the balance. For the hasty reader the most essential parts are the first eight pages, constituting the Commission's comments, and the summary and recommendations, of Messrs. Goldthwaite H. Dorr and Sidney P. Simpson who prepared the report. In the preparation of the report these gentlemen were assisted by numbers of experts in the fields of law, political science, sociology, and accounting, and by literally hundreds of citizens, working for the most part without compensation, who furnished the underlying data. In spite of the lack of time, lack of funds, lack of trained investigators, and, perhaps most serious of all, lack of uniform and detailed statistics, it must be said that the Report accomplishes that which must have been its chief purpose, namely, the calling of public attention with vigor and clarity to the exceedingly great importance of crime just from the standpoint of the economic loss and waste which it entails.

Recommended Citation

Herbert F. Taggart, REPORT ON THE COST OF CRIME, 30 Mich. L. Rev. 74 (1931).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol30/iss1/11