Harm focused policing

'Harm-focused policing aims to inform policing priorities by weighing the harms of criminality together with data from beyond crime and disorder, in order to focus police resources in furtherance of both crime and harm reduction'.

[Source: Ratcliffe, J. H. (2015). Harm-focused policing. Ideas in American Policing series (issue 19). Washington DC: Police Foundation (page 3)].

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Attempts were made in the 1970s and 1980s to assess crime severity, but these efforts were limited to selected participants and a few specific crime examples. In the current context harm is conceptualized much more broader than crime. For example, harm is sometimes discussed with reference to the impact of drug abuse in a public health context. Example information and data sources could influence harm-focused policing include drug overdose information that could help triage drug markets for interdiction, traffic fatality data to guide police patrol responses, and community impact assessments to prioritize violent street gangs.

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Harm indices

One of the central components of harm within policing is the creation and use of a harm index as a method to weigh crime in a manner more appropriate to the harm that the crime causes. In the UK numerous students at the Cambridge Institute of Criminology have used the Cambridge Crime Harm Index. For some details of this index see Sherman, L. W. (2013). Targeting, testing and tracking police services: The rise of evidence-based policing, 1975-2025. In M. Tonry (Ed.), Crime and Justice in America, 1975-2025. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Many of the student projects cite an (unfortunately unpublished) report as their source [Sherman L. W., Neyroud P. W., Neyroud E. C. (2014). The Cambridge Crime Harm Index (CHI): Measuring total harm from crime based on sentencing guidelines, Version 2.0. (Unpublished report for University of Cambridge)]. However fortunately more details are in this publication; Sherman, L., et al. (2016). "The Cambridge crime harm index: Measuring total harm from crime based on sentencing guidelines." Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 10(3): 171-183.

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Outside of the UK, with the assistance of Amber Perenzin (now Askey) and officers and analysts from the Philadelphia Police Department, I used the Pennsylvania Crime Code to develop a crime harm index applicable to UCR crime. A demonstration of how to use these in a practical context can be found in these publications below:

• Ratcliffe, J. H. (2015). Towards an index for harm-focused policing. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 9(2), 164-182. 

• Ratcliffe, J. H. (2015). Harm-focused policing. Ideas in American Policing series (issue 19). Washington DC: Police Foundation.

• Ratcliffe, J. H., & Kikuchi, G. (2019). Harm-focused offender triage and prioritization: a Philadelphia case study. Policing: An International Journal, 42(1), 59-73.