How Much Does That Cost? Examining the Economic Costs of Crime in North America Attributable to People With Psychopathic Personality Disorder

Cost of illness research has established that mental disorders lead to significant social burden and massive financial costs. A significant gap exists for the economic burden of many personality disorders, including psychopathic personality disorder (PPD). In the current study, we used a top-down prevalence-based cost of illness approach to estimate bounded crime cost estimates of PPD in the United States and Canada. Three key model parameters (PPD prevalence, relative offending rate of individuals with PPD, and national costs of crime for each country) were informed by existing literature. Sensitivity analyses and Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to provide bounded and central tendency estimates of crime costs, respectively. The estimated PPD-related costs of crime ranged from $245.50 billion to $1,591.57 billion (simulated means = $512.83 to $964.23 billion) in the United States and $12.14 billion to $53.00 billion (simulated means = $25.33 to $32.10 billion) in Canada. These results suggest that PPD may be associated with a substantial economic burden as a result of crime in North America. Recommendations are discussed regarding the burden-treatment discrepancy for PPD, as the development of future effective treatment for the disorder may decrease its costly burden on health and justice systems.