Abstract
An emerging line of research explores how calculating the harm associated with different types of crime serves as a method to measure crime across times, places and people. A crime harm index (CHI) is suggested to produce a more reliable bottom line indicator of public safety and it would allow law enforcement agencies to invest their scarce resources in proportion to the harm caused by various types of crimes. This scoping literature review maps the literature on crime harm indices published after 2006 by answering the following research questions: (1) what is the rationale for a CHI, (2) what are the possible ways to operationalize a CHI; (3) how can a CHI be used in crime analysis; (4) what are the general outcomes of the studies using a CHI; (5) what are the known challenges and critiques of a CHI and (6) what research gaps related to CHI are expressed in this field of research?.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 423-445 |
| Journal | Police Practice and Research |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2023 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
This research was carried out within the What Works in Policing research programme of the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR) and funded by the Netherlands Police. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. They also thank the respondents that participated in an online survey among the authors of the included studies in this literature review for sharing information on additional relevant (grey) literature that was initially not captured by the search strategy.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| NSCR | |
| Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement | |
| Netherlands Police |