Cost of Violence Calculator

Everytown/PIRE’s published national cost inputs accompany its 2022 methodological note, based on 2019 injuries and deaths. We use the United States assault/homicide row, separately for fatal and nonfatal injuries. The broader source category includes legal intervention and terrorism. ICM does not add those incidents to your entered assault counts; the unit costs remain a proxy with that limitation.

Every row follows count × national average cost. Government totals use the public share; economic totals here use medical, mental health, employer and work losses. Quality of life is separate. Work losses include victim and perpetrator production losses. Criminal justice combines courts, prosecution/defense, corrections and victim assistance; this source does not support a reliable local split between those agencies.

Research assumptions cover emergency and later care, expected justice involvement, and future losses. They do not reflect local salaries, hospital prices, clearance rates, sentencing, injury severity or age mix. Federal and state costs are not all borne by the city. No uncertainty interval is invented; displayed dollars reflect arithmetic, not that level of real-world precision.

All base unit costs are 2019 dollars. Display conversion multiplies by the BLS annual all-items CPI-U for the chosen year divided by 255.657. A budget is independently converted from its stated dollar year. This broad inflation adjustment does not update medical practice, wages, sentencing or the underlying research. It is not a forecast.

Excluded from ICM’s monetary estimates: local property values, business formation, tax-revenue effects, displacement, school disruption, trust, untreated nonfatal injuries and a complete accounting of family or service-provider burdens. Government and economic views overlap and must not be summed. Missing counts stay unknown.

CDC WISQARS distinguishes fatalities, hospitalizations and emergency-department visits; its nonfatal estimates are national, not ZIP counts. NICJR’s 2023 national report provides a different government-cost model. Its average costs account for cases that do not proceed through the full justice process. We do not mix its values with PIRE or use its higher full-case costs as average costs. BJS corrections data can inform a local study; prison population or sentence statistics alone are not a cost per shooting.

Urban Institute’s six-city neighborhood research (2017) connects concentrated violence with changes in business activity, employment, housing and credit. Those findings do not supply a transferable price for an individual ZIP code.

Everytown’s survivor research describes trauma and disruption in daily life. These accounts add context; they do not establish a local dollar amount. Ask families, schools and providers about interrupted care, attendance, displacement, trust and unmet support needs, and report those findings separately.

A program budget needs a service population, staffing and supervision plan, partner commitments, data capacity and sustained funding. A category label is not an implementation plan.

Everytown and HAVI’s HVIP costing guide gives an illustrative model of about $1.08 million annually for 100 participants, a community organization working with one midsize-city hospital, and 15% indirect costs. This is the guide’s 2024 planning example, not an inflation-adjusted local quote or a promised effect. Use its staffing assumptions to build a local budget. We do not assign unsupported national price ranges to other intervention types.