A crime harm index is a measurement of

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definiti ...

rates Rate or rates may refer to: Finance * Rate (company), an American residential mortgage company formerly known as Guaranteed Rate * Rates (tax), a type of taxation system in the United Kingdom used to fund local government * Exchange rate, rate ...

in which crimes are weighted based on how much "harm" they cause. The most simple and most common method of measuring an area's crime rate is to count the number of crimes. In this case, one minor crime (e.g. a

shoplifting Shoplifting (also known as shop theft, shop fraud, retail theft, or retail fraud) is the theft of goods from a retail establishment during business hours. The terms ''shoplifting'' and ''shoplifter'' are not usually defined in law, and genera ...

incident) counts for the same as a single very serious crime (e.g.

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse committed with the necessary Intention (criminal law), intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisd ...

). Leading criminologists have argued in favour of creating a weighted measurement. Lawrence W. Sherman and two other researchers wrote in 2016 that "All crimes are not created equal. Counting them as if they are fosters distortion of risk assessments, resource allocation, and accountability." Most crime harm indices use prison sentencing policies to decide what the "harm score" of an offence should be. The harm score of an offence is the default length of the prison sentence that an offender would receive, if the crime was committed by a single offender.

Cambridge Crime Harm Index

The Cambridge Crime Harm Index (CCHI) was unveiled in 2016. It was developed by Lawrence W. Sherman,

Peter Neyroud Peter William Neyroud CBE QPM (born 12 August 1959) is a retired British police officer. He was the Chief Executive Officer for the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), and former Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police. Hannounced his r ...

and Eleanor Neyroud. It uses sentencing guidelines of England and Wales to calculate the harm score of each crime. The system has already been adopted by several UK police forces. According to the CCHI, the harm score for a crime is the default prison sentence that an offender would receive for committing it, if the crime was committed by a single offender with no prior convictions. For minor crimes that would instead result in a fine, the harm score is the number of days it would take someone with a minimum wage job to earn the money to pay the fine. The Cambridge Crime Harm Index has inspired other crime harm indices for New Zealand, Denmark and Western Australia. It has also been evaluated for use in Scotland, though officers of

Police Scotland Police Scotland (), officially the Police Service of Scotland (), is the national police force of Scotland. It was formed in 2013, through the merging of eight regional police forces in Scotland, as well as the specialist services of the Scottis ...

have noted that it does not reflect Scottish sentencing guidelines.{{cite web , url=http://www.empac.org.uk/blog-crime-harm-index-future-dr-laura-knight-supt-dave-hill/ , title=BLOG: Is the Crime Harm Index the future? – By Dr Laura Knight and Supt. Dave Hill , last1=Knight , first1=Laura , last2=Hill , first2=Dave , date= 21 April 2017 , website= EMPAC , publisher= , access-date= 7 December 2017 , quote=

References

Harm reduction Crime statistics Index numbers