Crime harm index

Criminology
Main Theories
Conflict theory Criminalization Differential association Integrative criminology Rational choice theory Structural functionalism Subcultural theory Symbolic interactionism Victimisation
Methods
Comparative Crime statistics Cold case Dark figure Dog whistle Fear of crime Women's Under-reporting Unsolved deaths Profiling Ethnography Uniform Crime Reports Crime harm index Crime mapping Positivist school Qualitative Quantitative BJS NIBRS Recidivism
Subfields and other major theories
American Anthropological Biosocial criminology Conflict Criminology Critical Culture Cyber Demography Development Environmental Experimental Organizational Political Psychology Public Radical criminology
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A crime harm index is a measurement of crime rates 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 incident) counts for the same as a single very serious crime (e.g. murder). 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."^[1]

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.