It is no longer possible, for any political subset, to deny the extent and seriousness of the crime problem in Colorado. Data from multiple sources, national and local, point inescapably to the skyward trajectory of criminal activity in the state, granting empirical illumination to a very human issue.

The Common Sense Institute recently released a study that adds to this accumulating mountain of data, offering an analysis of the problem from the angle of economic impacts.

The study’s principal authors, George Brauchler and Mitch Morrissey, are particularly well suited to comment on criminal matters, having dedicated their professional lives to quarterbacking society’s response to them as District Attorneys. The partnership with CSI’s considerable economic analytical resources has resulted in a paper that is as edifying as it is bleak.

The figures are riveting. Those concerning the escalating crime rate in Colorado are rather depressing, if not especially surprising. In this space back in September, I wrote of the FBI’s crime data for 2020 which quantified what everyone intuitively realized, that crime was up in the country, and even more so in Colorado. CSI’s report puts some meat on that skeleton, diving a bit further into the numbers to reveal a litany of terrifying statistics; for instance, that the state’s average monthly crime rate in 2021 is 28% higher than it was a decade ago, 15% higher than in 2019.

The study zeroes in on the steady rise in crime over the 10-year period between 2011 and 2020. Among the grim findings: Colorado experienced the highest increase in property crime in the nation over the last decade; the state’s violent crime rate was 35% higher in 2020 than 2011, while it rose nationwide only 3% during that time; the murder rate in Colorado was 106% higher in 2020 than in 2011, rape 9% higher, and assault 40%; and that Colorado had the highest rate of motor vehicle theft in the nation in 2020, 135% higher than in 2011 when it was below the national average – which has gone up only 3% during that time.

Now these are sobering figures, but the report’s most salient ones are those which quantify the cost of lingering crime wave. The total cost of crime in Colorado in 2020, as calculated by the authors, was more than $27 billion, a number which the report points out is more than three quarters of the state’s annual $35 billion budget. These costs are separated into the tangible and the intangible. The tangible factors are those most directly measurable – medical bills, property damage, the public expense of policing, prosecuting, defending, incarcerating (albeit rarely) perpetrators, administering the justice system and the costs associated with mental heath treatment and loss of productivity to the victims. These costs come out to $8.5 billion, a figure the report helpfully places into perspective by juxtaposing it with the mere $6.77 billion that represents the combined market value of all five of Denver’s professional sports teams.

The other part of the equation is the intangible costs – pain and suffering of the victims, decrease in quality of life, that sort of thing, which the report values at $19 billion. The analytical guru’s at CSI are especially good at this sort of thing, so one is reluctant to second-guess their formulations; but it brings to mind stories like that from all the way back in the early 1970s in New York, the heart-wrenching account of the elderly husband and wife who, after a second time of experiencing the apartment they lived in for 40 years being broken into, and being robbed and tortured by their assailants, decided that life in the Big Apple was not worth it and so divested their remaining life savings to their favorite charity, left an explanatory note and hanged themselves. The sum of their savings was around $23,000, but really, how does one accurately quantify that?

There is much more in the report, which is well worth the read, including a section examining the spate of regrettable criminal justice reforms at all levels, of which the causal, or at least contributory, relationship to the current increase in crime levels is difficult to dismiss.

Policy alone cannot be blamed in isolation – a general diminution of societal morality, especially as countenanced by the courts and judges, must surely play a role. As the late Roger Scruton wrote, “as moral feeling recedes, so too does the desire to convict or subject to punishment.” But the reforms spurred by this moral indifference are leading us back to a dark place where an octogenarian couple may again feel compelled to enter a suicide pact in order to avoid victimization. Reforms, that is, which make a mockery of the very idea of a free society.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.