SEEN FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE CONTROVERSIAL NEW LIST OF POLICE PRIORITIES

THE new Crime Harm Index developed by the Office for National Statistics tries to make police figures more meaningful – by giving more importance to some offences than to others. Rather than treating every crime recorded by police, from murder to shoplifting, on an equal basis, it gives them each their own individual ‘weight’. These are derived from the proportion of offenders jailed for each offence and the average number of days criminals spend in jail for them. The harm index is then calculated by multiplying this weight for each offence by the number of offences each year, allowing researchers to see if serious crimes are going up or down. But a number of apparent discrepancies emerge, which could skew police priorities.