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May-Britt Rinaldo Ronnebro, MSt

Superintendent, National Police, Sweden

The Swedish Crime Harm Index (SCHI)

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May-Britt Rinaldo

Research Objective

• Comparing Crime Hot Spot versus Crime Harm Spots in a

Swedish City: A descriptive research study.

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May-Britt Rinaldo

Research Method and Design

• Identify all crimes in Gothenburg City

• Identify crimes against the person in public place and

cluster these crimes onto the Gothenburg City map by

location

• Create the ”Swedish Crime Harm Index”

• Assess all crimes against the person in public place with

the Swedish CHI and cluster the Swedish CHI by location

onto the Gothenburg City map

• Comparing Crime Hot Spots with Crime Harm Spots

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May-Britt Rinaldo

Crime Data Gothenburg City 2014

38,351 All crimes recorded in RAR

953 All reported crimes against the person in public place

according to the official decision

2,717 recorded crimes against the person in

public place

87 Misclassified

2,630 Crimes against the person in public place

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May-Britt Rinaldo

Officially 16 Crime Classification Codes

generated 953 violent crimes against the

Person in Public Place

”The Offical

Recording”

Population: 123,594

38,351 Crimes reported

in RAR

953 Violent Crimes

8 Frequent Crime

Addresses

11-25 Violent Crime/

Address during the

period of 12 months

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May-Britt Rinaldo

2,717 Crimes against person in public

place – Extended Recording

Extended Recording

based on information

from RAR and

presented by Hobit

1.5

In total 74 Crime

Classification Codes

including the 16 official

4 Hot Spots Addresses

25 High Crime

Addresses

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May-Britt Rinaldo

Crime Harm Index

• The Cambridge Crime Harm Index (CHI) and the US Index for Harm-Focused Policing

uses sentencing policy (Guidelines) to assign a “weight” of severity to each offence

type. It then creates an index based on prison days.

• The Canadian Police Reported Crime Severity Index (SCI) and the Western Australian

Crime Harm Index (WACHI) uses sentences from courts for each crime type to creating

the index based on prison days.

• The Swedish Crime Harm Index is based on estimated sentence for each crime

that the offender can spend in prison. (Guiding verdicts from the Court of Appeal

and precedents the Supreme Court)

• The Danish Crime Harm Index is based on the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP)

specifying what sentence the prosecutor should ask for in court when having a first time

offender charged without mitigation or aggravating factors.

• These Indexes can be calculated within societies or cities over time, across areas within

cities, and across offenders and victims in their individual crime histories.

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May-Britt Rinaldo

The ”Swedish Crime Harm Index” (Guiding verdicts from the Court of Appeal and

precedents the Supreme Court)

Crime

Code

Crime Description F/S/C Days

SCHI

Y.M.D

Lowest

Y.M.D

Highest

Y.M.D

0312 Murder, manslaughter or assault

with a fatal outcome with the use of

firearms against woman

6570 18.00.00 18 Years 18 Years

0357 Physical abuse, other than gross,

against man 18 years or older,

unfamiliar with the victim, outdoor

C 60 00.02.00 2 Months 2 Months

0441 Unlawful persecution of boy under

18 “Stalking”

292 00.09.22 6 Months 1 Year

9806 Robbery against an individual, not

functional impairment, under 18

years, without firearms, outdoor

(Mugging)

365 01.00.00 1 Year 1 Year

5 judges, Inter-rater reliability:

Pearson correlations ranging from r = .966 to .994

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May-Britt Rinaldo

Crime Harm Locations in Gothenburg City

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May-Britt Rinaldo

Järntorget

Brunnsparken

Drottningtorget

Drottningtorget 5

Heden

Andra Långgatan

Slottsskogen

Nils Ericsson Terminalen

Kungsportavenyn

Drottningstorget Götgatan

Lilla Bommen

Vasagatan

Norra Hamngatan

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May-Britt Rinaldo

Comparison Crime Harm – Hot Spots

no yes

Count 0 28 28

% within CHI _top 5%0,0% 100,0% 100,0%

% within HOT

SPOT_top_5%0,0% 50,0% 31,8%

Count 32 28 60

% within CHI _top 5%53,3% 46,7% 100,0%

% within HOT

SPOT_top_5%100,0% 50,0% 68,2%

Total Count 32 56 88

HOT SPOTS top 5% locations

Total

CHI_ top

5%

location

no

yes

A sole focus on CHI would

miss 53% of hot spots

A sole focus on

hot spots would

miss 50% of CHI

spots

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May-Britt Rinaldo

Summary of Findings

• 2,630 crimes against the person in public place

• Swedish Crime Harm Index: 333,871 prison days

• 60 locations make up for nearly half the crime harm (154649 days =

46,3 %) (= top 5% of CHI Harm per location)

• Number of crimes in these top 5% locations ranges from 1 – 45.

• The top 60 CHI spots include the 4 locations that are also hot spots:

– The highest hotspot is also the highest harm spot,

– Two hotspots within the top 1% of CHI spots, 1 hot spot is in the top 2% of CHI

spots.

• A sole focus on Hot Spots would miss 50% of CHI spots

• A sole focus on CHI would miss 53% of hot spots

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May-Britt Rinaldo

Implication and

Implementation

• Research – Stockholm (2016)

and Malmö (2018)

• Municipality of Helsingborg (2017)

• Establishment of the WACHI

(2018)

• Establishment of the DCHI (2018)

• Expected establishment of Hong

Kong Crime Harm Index (2019)

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May-Britt Rinaldo

THANK YOU

May-Britt Rinaldo Ronnebro

E-mail: may-britt.rinaldo@polisen.se

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May-Britt Rinaldo

References

• Babyak, Colin, Matarazzo, Anthony, Turner, John and Wallace, Marnie, 2009.

Measuring Crime in Canada: Introducing the Crime Severity Index and Improvements to

the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey. Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics.

• Sherman, L.W., Neyroud, P.W. and Neyroud, E.C., 2013. The Cambridge Crime Harm

Index (CHI) Measuring total harm from crime based on sentencing guidelines,

Cambridge.

• Ratcliffe, Jerry H. 2014. Towards an Index for Harm-Focused Policing”. Oxford

University Press.

• Rinaldo, M-B. V. (2016). Comparing crime hotspots and crime harm-spots in a Swedish

City: a descriptive analysis. University of Cambridge, UK.

• Forsner, Lisa, 2016. Minska brottslighet och öka trygghet. Om att uppnå Polisens två

kriminalpolitiska mål med samma medel. Lunds Universitet, Rättssociologiska

institutionen

• Aagaard Andersen, H. and Mueller-Johnson, K., 2018. The Danish Crime Harm Index:

How It Works and Why It Matters, Camb J Evid Based Polic

https://doi.org/10.1007/s41887-018-0021-7

• House P. D. and Neyroud, P. W. 2018. Developing a Crime Harm Index for Western

Australia: the WACHI https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41887-018-0022-6