Abstract
Research QuestionTo what extent do people classified by police as ‘offenders’ and those they classify as ‘victims’ overlap, thus creating a third category of individual targets for crime and harm reduction called ‘victim-offenders’?DataLeicestershire police records in the 3-year period 2014–2016 were compiled on all 117,766 individuals who were identified as either victims or offenders in all 159,702 crimes in which one or more individual victims were named. A 730-day-at-risk tracking period after individuals’ initial appearance in the data set was examined for the tracked cohort of 42,916 individuals who entered the data set in 2014 only and were ultimately identified in 62,336 individual-victim crimes.MethodsEach individual who entered the data set from 2014 to 2016 was classified as (only) a victim, (only) an offender, or (both) victim and offender in separate events. We designate the latter category as victim-offenders. The total count of criminal events and total recommended days of imprisonment value of the Cambridge Crime Harm Index (CHI) were calculated for each individual, both for crimes committed and victimizations experienced. Individuals who entered the data set in 2014 were tracked for 730 days from their first recorded offence or victimization. All individuals were ranked, by both crime counts and CHI values, from highest to lowest.FindingsFrom 2014 to 2016, victims comprised 89.9% of the 117,766 individuals ever appearing as victims or offenders, offenders comprised 7.9% and victim-offenders were 3.2%. In 2014, all 38,318 individual victims and 4598 offenders were placed into the 730-day tracking period in which 1825 individuals became victim-offenders, or 4.2%. Initial offenders were seven times as likely to become victims (17.9%) as initial victims were to become offenders (2.6%). Victim-offenders had 74.5% higher average harm scores and 68% higher average crime counts than the overall 2014 entry cohort, with 65% of victim-offenders’ harm a result of their victimisation. Only 417 ‘high harm-high volume’ individuals experience or cause the most crime harm as well as the most crime, of whom 49.9% (208/417) are victim-offenders, 33.3% (139/417) victims and 16.7% (70/417) offenders.ConclusionOpportunities to reduce crime and harm through targeting police and partnership resources on the ‘power few’ (Sherman, Journal of Experimental Criminology, 3(4), 299–321, 2007) can be enhanced by identification of victim-offenders and testing prevention strategies appropriate to this third category of people.
Highlights
In 2015, Leicestershire Police identified an innovative opportunity to apply the Cambridge Crime Harm Index (Sherman 2013; Sherman et al 2016) to reported crime data
Research Question To what extent do people classified by police as ‘offenders’ and those they classify as ‘victims’ overlap, creating a third category of individual targets for crime and harm reduction called ‘victim-offenders’? Data Leicestershire police records in the 3-year period 2014–2016 were compiled on all 117,766 individuals who were identified as either victims or offenders in all 159,702 crimes in which one or more individual victims were named
The basic questions this article attempts to answer are these: 1. How substantial is the crime and harm associated with individuals who are reported as both victims and offenders (i.e. ‘victim-offenders’), relative to the majority of persons known to the police who are identified over relatively long periods of time as only victims or only offenders?
Summary
In 2015, Leicestershire Police identified an innovative opportunity to apply the Cambridge Crime Harm Index (Sherman 2013; Sherman et al 2016) to reported crime data. The Cambridge Crime Harm Index (CCHI) provides a method of scoring the legal severity of each crime event by weighting each reported category of crime using Sentencing Council guidelines Those guidelines recommend the number of days of imprisonment as the ‘starting point’ in determining the actual sentence for each offence resulting in conviction. The application of CCHI in Leicestershire in 2015 revealed that the concentration and distribution of crime based on crime count by location were different from the places recording high crime harm. This resulted in the implementation of a new Police Community Support Officer role, aimed at problem solving and targeting the identified place-based ‘high harm’ (The Economist 2016)
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