what is the crime harm index?
“All Crimes Are Not Created Equal”
The Cambridge Crime Harm Index (CCHI) has been updated for February 2026.
The CCHI (Feb 2026) which has been provided by Dr Eleanor Neyroud is freely available to download here
Eleanor has also provided an overview document regarding for the new offences introduced, e.g., The 2023 Online Safety Act, or for where there is only draft sentencing guidelines available, (e.g hare coursing) and new housing offences. This is available here
When adding new offences for where there are no sentencing guidelines e.g. the online safety act offences, “near” offences have currently been used to give a weighting. The guidelines for both the housing offences and also for hare coursing are preliminary guidelines, it is possible that when the guidelines are finalised these weightings may change. If they do the CCHI will be updated and reposted
How harm scores are created for non custodial sentences is available here (N.B. The CCHI uses the mimimum wage from 2023 because bands for fines have not been updated since June 2022)
The definitive academic article on the CCHI “Cambridge Crime Harm Index: Measuring Total Harm from Crime Based On Sentencing Guidelines” (Sherman, Neyroud & Neyroud (2016)) is available here
For any queries regarding the CCHI please initially contact chief@cambridge-ebp.co.uk
Additional information about the origins of the Cambridge Crime Harm Index, articles citing it and its adaptation in other countries is also provided in the next section. We have also provided links to where you can obtain free additional information.
Finally, as we receive and reply to queries about the CCHI, where the answers or advice will be of use to others, they will be set out below. (The questions will be fully anonymised) .
CCHI Questions and Answers 2026
Q: Why does the CCHI not take account of the increase in the minimum wage?
A: Since the first edition of the CCHI we have used the number of whole days needed to work at the minimum wage in order to pay the fine. Originally this was set to £8.72 for over 25s, with the starting point based on the minimum relevant weekly income for the fine bands being: Band A £60, Band B £120 and Band C £180. This resulted in scores of 1 , 2 and 3 points as harm scores for offences resulting in fines. Over the years the minimum wage has increased, will be set to £12.71 for over 21s from the 1st April 2026. While the minimum wage has increased, the bands for the fines has not been updated since 2022. The minimum relevant weekly income is still considered £120 per week.
We did look at using a fine amount proportionate to the new minimal wage, the relevant weekly income (RWI) does not include taxes or national insurance, so a worker on minimum wage would be expected to have a RWI of approximately £366 (based on being taxed at 20% and paying 8% national insurance while working a 40 hour week). However, this would result in a Band A fine taking 1.8 days to pay off, a Band B fine taking 3.6 days and Band C 5.4 days. This would make the score for Band C fine comparative with the community order score. Community orders are considered a more serious penalty than the fines, so we need a score that would distinguish between the different penalties.
After consideration we have decided to keep the harm score for the fines set to 1 point for Band A, 2 points for Band B and 3 points for Band C to enable the distinction between the fines and the community order scores. This also makes it easier for forces already using the CCHI to keep using the scoring without having to make significant alterations to the scores in their databases. If alterations are made to the fine bands we can re-examine these decisions at a later point.
Dr Eleanor Neyroud
History and Origins of the Cambridge Crime Harm Index
All crimes are not created equal in the harm they cause: homicide is many times more harmful than shoplifting but in crime statistics where offences are counted by number, they appear equivalent. For example, in the UK for the year ending September 2019, there were 3,578,000 incidents of theft and 729 homicides (Office for National Statistics, 2019). An increase of 500 thefts would be a small change in the overall number of thefts and have little impact on police resources. 500 extra homicides would have large consequences both for the harm caused and the impact on police resources. In a number-only count, the additional 500 thefts or homicides would result in the same overall number of crimes, yet clearly the impacts are disparate.
This reality has led to the proposition of a “Harm Index” to measure how harmful different crimes are in proportion to the others. This approach adds a larger weight to more harmful crimes (e.g. homicide, rape and grievous bodily harm with intent), distinguishing them from less harmful types of crime (e.g. minor thefts, criminal damage and common assault). Practically, adoption of a harm index can allow targeting of the highest-harm places, the most harmful offenders, the most harmed victims, and can assist in identifying victim-offenders. Experimentally, use of a harm index can add an additional dimension to the usual measures of success or failure, by considering harm prevented as well as reductions in prevalence or frequency. For the police, creation of harm index could allow them to invest scarce resources in proportion to the harm of each offence type.
The initial paper (Sherman, Neyroud and Neyroud, 2016) outlining the creation of the Cambridge Crime Harm Index (CCHI) is available here. Sherman, Neyroud and Neyroud (2016) propose that any index needs to meet three requirements in order to be considered a legitimate measure of harm: An index must meet a democratic standard, be reliable and also be adopted at minimal cost to the end user. To meet these requirements, Sherman, Neyroud and Neyroud (2016) opted for using sentence starting points rather than maximum or average actual sentences. The sentencing starting point is used to calculate crime harm as it provides a baseline penalty relative to the crime. We propose that it is a better measure of harm caused by the crime than average actual sentences, which are offender-focused and thus substantially affected by previous offending history.
An initial index of crime harm for England and Wales based on starting point sentences was created, scoring around 700 offences. Offences where the starting point was a set prison sentence were converted into number-of-days imprisonment: for example homicide in England and Wales starts at 15 years, which would give a CCHI score of 5,475. For offences where the starting point is either a community sentence or a fine, scores based on the number of hours needed to complete the unpaid work requirement of the community sentence or hours needed to work to pay off the fine were used. This index has since been updated for 2020 and now includes not only the criminal justice codes and home office classifications relevant to identifying each type of crime, but also the unique reference codes used by the ATHENA system, a crime recording and management system used by several UK forces, aiming to improve the ease of adding CCHI scores to existing police data.
The 2026 Cambridge Crime Harm Index is available at the top of this page.
The Cambridge Crime Harm Consensus proposes creation of seven statistics for counting crime, usefully including separation of historic crime reports, creation of a harm detection fraction and separation of public reported crime and those detected by proactive police activity, with the aim of providing the public with a more reliable and realistic assessment of trends, patterns and differences in public safety.
The consensus paper is available here.
A list of academic papers using the Cambridge Crime Harm Index is available here.
Counting crime by harm is an idea that has spread beyond the United Kingdom with indices published for Denmark (Andersen and Mueller-Johnson, 2018), Sweden (Karrholm et al. 2020), Western Australia (House and Neyroud, 2018), California (Mitchell, 2017), New Zealand and other countries.
A list of academic papers discussing Harm Index creation or use in other countries is available here. Some papers are available below.
Queries about the Cambridge Crime Harm Index should be directed to: chief@cambridge-ebp.co.uk
The CCHI is also covered in the online Police Leaders’ Short course (more info) and the online Police Analysts’ course (more info).
Danish Crime Harm Index (Anderson & Müller-Johnson, 2018)
Swedish Crime Harm Index (Kärrholm, 2020)
Western Australia Crime Harm Index (House & Neyroud, 2018)