U.S. Spends $5.4B Yearly on Incarcerating Adults for Sex Crimes Against Children: Study

The U.S. spends nearly $5.4 billion a year to incarcerate adults convicted of sex crimes against children, according to a new study.

“The costs…are extraordinary,” study author Elizabeth J. Letourneau, a professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School’s Department of Mental Health and director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse, said in a statement accompanying release of the study.

“We spend billions of dollars on criminal justice remedies after child sexual abuse has already occurred, and yet there are very limited resources for preventing this abuse from occurring in the first place.”

The estimate does not include any costs incurred prior to incarceration (e.g., related to detection and prosecution) or post-release, that is, related to supervision or registration.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated one in four girls and one in 13 boys under age 18 experience sexual abuse during childhood.

Research suggests that about 12 percent of the world’s children will experience some form of sexual abuse before they turn 18.

The study argued much of the expense could be avoided by developing effective, proactive strategies aimed at child sexual abuse prevention as well as improving reactive strategies like incarceration for sex crimes.

Letourneau said evidence-based interventions for people returning to their communities following incarceration for sex crimes should be more broadly disseminated.

“Child sexual abuse is indisputably both a criminal justice problem and a public health problem,” Letourneau said. “We need to develop, evaluate, and disseminate effective sex crime prevention strategies and these efforts—like reactive strategies—also require more  resources.”

Download the study here.