Comment on Kärrholm et al. “Designing the Swedish Crime Harm Index: an Evidence-Based Strategy”

Question Is the Swedish Crime Harm Index as presented and corrected in this Journal as reported by Kärrholm et al. Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing (2020a, b) a valid method for studying the long-term development of crime and of the harm caused by crime? Data Cited publications in this journal, Swedish crime statistics, and other evidence on historical changes in Swedish crime reporting. Methods Documentation of the ways in which crime counting in different categories has changed over time in Sweden. Findings The authors do not seem to have considered important aspects of the way the Swedish crime statistics are assembled. An overestimation of the increase in cases of homicide and of the penalty value of offenses that do not usually result in custodial sentences are two examples. The authors also fail to consider legislation that criminalizes previously unpunished (harmful) behavior. Conclusion The historical CHI, as it has been constructed by Kärrholm et al. is not an appropriate method for studying the long-term development of crime and of the harm caused by crime. In a time of net-widening and increasing punitiveness in the justice system, the CHI will show an increase even with no change in actual crime behavior. A simple measure of the current harm caused by crime may be useful for short-term analysis, planning, and the evaluation of police efforts, but it is inadequate as a means of studying the longitudinal development of the crime problem. In the calculation of CHI, harm caused by crimes that do not lead to imprisonment should also be included.

Crime count and crime harm in a post-socialist city: How does the law of crime concentration at places apply?

This article reports on a new empirical study evaluating crime concentration at places in a post-socialist city. We use principles of the law of crime concentration at places and the Cambridge Crime Harm Index to measure crime count and crime harm concentration at the level of street segments. The research found differences between crime concentration in a post-socialist city and crime concentration reported by recent studies from US or UK cities. Both crime and harm concentration are consistently less spatially clustered than expected by the theory in a post-socialist city. This finding has significance for both international criminology and national policing authorities, because the success of place-based policing is highly dependent on strong spatial clustering of crime. The study underlines the importance of experimental criminology and theory testing for the transfer of crime prevention approaches from their original contexts.

Comparing methods for measuring crime harm/severity

Ensuring police resources are focused where they are most needed requires understanding of the consequences of crime in relation to offenders, victims and places. Most crime analysis is based on counts of crimes, but not all crimes are equivalent to one another. Researchers have recently developed two methods – the Crime Harm Index and the Crime Severity Score – for weighting crime counts according to the severity of different crime types. This article compares these two methods by applying them to two common crime-analysis scenarios: focusing resources on the most-important types of crime and in the areas most affected by crime. The two measures are found to produce substantially different results when other factors are held constant. The results of severity-weighted crime analysis (and the decision made based on them) could therefore be greatly influenced by the method chosen. The implications of this are discussed and future research avenues outlined.