Crime and Mental Well-Being

Abstract

We provide empirical evidence of crime’s impact on the mental well-being of both victims and nonvictims. We differentiate between the direct impact to victims and the indirect impact to society due to the fear of crime. The results show a decrease in mental well-being after violent crime victimization and that the violent crime rate has a negative impact on mental well-being of nonvictims. Property crime victimization and property crime rates show no such comparable impact. Finally, we estimate that society-wide impact of increasing the crime rate by one victim is about 80 times more than the direct impact on the victim.