'The price tag is sobering': New study estimates each fatal shooting in Milwaukee costs taxpayers $2.1 million

MILWAUKEE — After a recent report of a deadly shooting in Milwaukee, we received an email from a viewer named Mario.

He wrote in part, “The tragedy of a shooting is much greater than the financial cost, but people pay attention to the costs because that affects them personally.”

Our Lighthouse team did some digging and found a brand new study with a staggering figure.

“If there are 200 approximately homicides in the city of Milwaukee every year and two to three times that many non-fatal shootings, the cumulative cost to residents of Milwaukee taxpayers who live in the city is exponential,” she said.

Rabinowitz is the research director at the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR). For the first time, it recently published a study that breaks down the financial costs of fatal and non-fatal shootings in Milwaukee.

Watch: Study estimates each fatal shooting in Milwaukee costs taxpayers $2.1 million

New study estimates each fatal shooting in Milwaukee costs taxpayers $2.1 million

The national non-profit focused on six key expenses.

Each time police and first responders go to the scene of a deadly shooting, NICJR found it costs an average of about $8,000. Average hospital costs amount to nearly $90,000. Investigating and prosecuting the crime adds up to another $55,000.

That’s followed by incarceration which is by far the biggest cost of all to the tune of $1.7 million.

When you add victim support expenses and lost tax revenue, the cost estimate for each fatal shooting exceeds $2 million, and more than 640,000 for non-fatal shootings, according to the study.

“There are going to be people who watch this story and say, ‘That’s hard to believe’. What would be your response to them?” TMJ4 reporter Ben Jordan asked.

“My first response to them would be that our estimates are far more conservative than the estimates of a number of other gun violence reduction organizations trying to do similar analyses and that’s because we’re only measuring the direct and measurable costs of gun violence,” Rabinowitz said.

Rabinowitz discovered Milwaukee homicides are more costly to taxpayers than similarly sized cities like Detroit, Indianapolis, and Atlanta largely because of higher incarceration costs in Wisconsin.

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“My hope is that people understand that these costs are not costs that we should be comfortable with,” Reggie Moore said.

Moore is the Director of Community Safety, Policy, and Engagement at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He collaborates with the city, county, and state to address violence as a public health issue. His team is now partnering with the researchers who studied the financial cost.

“What do you hope people who see this story take away from this report?” Jordan asked.

“I think it’s important. When you multiply the amount of homicides in one given year by the total cost, that’s hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said.

Moore hopes it helps people understand the value of prevention efforts and the need to invest upfront.

“For example, a program like 414 Life costs $2 million,” he said. “If it saves one life, the return on investment in preventing one homicide is clear. The price for doing nothing or not doing more to prevent these things on the front end is a cost none of us should be willing to pay.”

It’s important to note that Milwaukee’s homicides are down 22 percent compared to last year. According to this study, that reduction saves taxpayers an estimated $68 million.

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