Cost of Crime

The UK’s Daily Mailreports how two very criminal families, over the course of four decades, have cost taxpayers £37 million ($59 million).

The families were members of two notorious gangs in Birmingham, the Burger Bar Boys and the Johnson Crew.

The total cost to the public of these two gangs – as opposed to only the two families themselves – is thought to be nearly £190 million.

The £37 million includes the cost of police investigations, lawyers, trials and prison for murders, attempted murders and serious injuries inflicted by three generations from the pair of gangster families.

But it does not count the cost of medical care of victims, of undetected crimes by the same families, of their more minor crimes, or the cost in money or harm to their victims.

Nor does it take into account the state benefits claimed by the families, the education and extra teaching required by their children, their own burden on the NHS, or of providing them with council houses.