and wage losses are labeled "annual" costs due to crime, more precisely, they are the "total discounted present value of short-term and long-term costs associated with 1 year of crime." Thus, they are the total losses imposed by crimes that occur in a given year--regardless of when the losses actually occurred.

Overall, rape has the highest annual victim costs at $127 billion per year (excluding child sex abuse), followed by assault at $93 billion, murder (excluding arson and drunk driving deaths) at $71 billion, drunk driving (including fatalities) at $61 billion, and child abuse at $56 billion.

Excluded crimes. As mentioned earlier, several crime categories were not included in this study. However, other estimates of two common crimes--fraud and drug abuse--are reported, as is a preliminary estimate of the cost of child neglect.

Personal fraud. A recent survey of personal fraud victimization estimated the annual tangible costs for fraud to be $45 billion (Titus et al., 1995).

Drug abuse. Although drug abuse might lead to other forms of crime (either through violence associated with the distribution process or property crimes in support of a drug habit), these costs are already included in this study's victim cost estimates. The cost of illegal drug abuse itself, however, was not estimated. According to data published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (1992), the annual health care costs for illegal drug users were $5.2 billion in 1985, and drug treatment costs were an estimated $1.73 billion in 1989. Other costs not included were property losses caused by drug abuse and lost labor productivity due to drug abuse of those in (or who would otherwise have been in) the legitimate labor force. One other indicator of the cost of drug abuse is the value of sales, estimated at $40 billion to $50 billion annually.