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all the other things we could do with the time and money we currently commit to this problem. Anderson bases his calculations assuming a crime-free utopia, in which no one ever had to lock a house or car. He estimates we spend four minutes every day seeing to the security of our property. Multiply this by the 365 days in every year and the 200 million adults with property in the United States, and you can see how the wasted time adds up to a major cost to the economy— $89.6 billion, says An- derson. Moreover, if criminals were working for a living, rather than making everybody else’s life miserable or serving time, they could be contributing around $40 billion every year to the legitimate economy. And what of their victims? We have already considered the expense of treating them, but what of the production lost through their time off work? The sums Anderson has calculated are staggering, although they have to be kept in perspective. None of us seriously expects to be able to live in a world without any crime. Yet, if such expenditures could never be abolished altogether, is it unrealistic to hope that they might be signif- icantly reduced? Think of the schools, hospitals, and other services we might fund with the money saved. Or, looking at the figures another way, the savings amount to $4,118 for each American, per year.

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