The East Midlands Police Academic Collaboration (EMPAC) and SIPR are proud to host an important thematic Workshop on the Crime Harm Index on Wednesday 19th April.

The Crime Harm Index (CHI)* has stimulated much professional interest in its attempt to quantify the impact caused to victims and society. The CHI is a “menu of harm” that measures crime according to the price of damage inflicted on victims – rather than counting crimes as if they are all of equal seriousness. The CHI aims to improve the current situation where the police can focus on minor yet high-volume offences that cause less harm than rarer but more serious crimes.

Cambridge criminologists say that this simple, cost-neutral ratio of harmful crime, based on sentencing guidelines and numbers of ‘imprisonable’ days, will dramatically improve identification and policing of areas where the most damaging crime occurs, so-called ‘harm spots’, as well as the most dangerous repeat offenders – who can be missed in overview analyses.

Cambridge Criminology Professor Lawrence Sherman believes that ‘not all crimes are created equal’ and that the adoption of the CHI would help make optimal use of scarce resources through more targeted policing, which could, in turn, reduce prison populations

Speakers

The CHI is being trialled by a number of UK forces, including Leicestershire, whose Assistant Chief Constable, Phil Kay, will explain at this new EMPAC & SIPR event on how his force has used it to identify crime ‘harm spots’ and the offenders who cause most harm, and have re-allocated resources, patrol patterns and offender management approaches accordingly. Deputy Chief Constable Gary Knighton, of Lincolnshire Police, is leading further work to explore the application of a ‘victim harm index’.

ACC Phil Kay and DCC Gary Knighton will be joined by Analysts from Northampton and Leicester, as well as Discussants from Scotland

This important forthcoming Workshop on the CHI and risk and threat will be a pivotal discussion to review the latest thinking in risk and threat priority decision making for 21st century policing. Bringing together the professional practice and innovation from the East Midlands region and Scotland, delegates will be able to hear and contribute to innovative approaches within policing.

PLEASE BOOK YOUR PLACE BELOW

*The Cambridge crime harm index uses a fixed scale based on the number of prison days an offence would receive at its lowest starting point for a previously unconvicted offender, with sentence severity reflecting harm caused by the crime. Former Chief Constable Peter Neyroud, now a Cambridge University Lecturer in Evidence-Based Policing, helped devise this approach as a former member of the Sentencing Council for England and Wales. Where penalty guidelines are expressed in community service hours, the CHI converts them into days. Where the starting point is a fine, this is calculated by the number of hours/days needed to earn the fine at minimum adult wage.

The venue for this Workshop is St Leonard’s Hall, University of Edinburgh

PLACES ARE FREE, BUT ARE STRICTLY LIMITED TO 20. THE WORKSHOP IS NOW FULL, BUT YOU CAN STILL APPLY TO BE PLACED ON A RESERVE LIST IN CASE OF CANCELLATIONS.