We can't afford murder

In Charles M. Blow's New York Times column "High Cost of Crime", he writes an opinion based piece taking a closer look at how much criminals are costing our society.  By detailing the cost of different crimes based on a recent study from Iowa State University, he is able to compare these costs with other federal government expenditures to bring to light just how big of a financial problem criminal activity is.
      He claims we are spending too much per crime in America.  He states that a recent Iowa State University study claims each murder costs the U.S. "a whopping $17.25 million." Drawing attention to this figure is a way for him to entice the reader to find out why it costs this amount.  He goes on to explain that although he doubts that the University could calculate some of these costs with "any real degree of accuracy", he understands what they are trying to do.  The author figures that factoring this cost per murder with the total murder rate per year, it will costs America around $300 billion.  According to him, "That's about as much as we've spent over nine years fighting the war in Afghanistan."  Comparing the yearly costs of murder with  the costs over nine years helps drive his point that we are spending too much per crime in America.
     The author also draws attention to the murder rate in our country.  Even though the overall murder rate in the U.S. is down according to him, it's still "twice as high as that of any of the other rich countries..."  This comparison helps reinforce his point that there must be a better way than our current course of action when it comes to murder and other crimes.
      He finishes up the article by suggesting a different course of action to remedy this problem.  He argues that we should spend more money up front in education costs and in social programs to hopefully prevent the crime from happening in the future.  Although he doesn't think all criminals can be stopped, some of them "are people who took a wrong turn, got lost and ended up on the wrong path."
     I believe Mr. Blow does a great job with highlighting just how much it costs this country when a murder occurs, and why we need to look to cut this cost.  He could have expanded on his suggested path of spending up front in education and social program costs, but his suggestion did leave me thinking more can be done in this area.  I will most certainly pay attention to candidates that bring this issue up, and what they intend to do to help put our country on the right track when it comes to crime.   I believe that anyone that has an interest in the federal budget, or how crime is handled in this country, should read this column.