Arson: a diagnostic study.

Arson is a socially costly, complex, and little-studied phenomenon in America. Fire setting, or incendiarism, is on the increase, and it costs America billions of dollars and an estimated 1,000 deaths and 10,000 injuries annually. In 1978 there were a reported 557,000 structural and vehicle fires of incendiary or suspicious origin, costing over a billion dollars. If one considers half the unknown-origin fires as incendiary, the cost rises to more than a billion and half dollars. I Arson is difficult to investigate, difficult to prosecute, and difficult to research. It is looming as an increasingly important social problem.