Abstract

This article offers a critical assessment of the Cambridge Crime Harm Index (Cambridge CHI) and other, similar indices that claim to measure harm from crime. Such indices use the length of prison sentences (derived from sentencing guidelines or sentencing data) given to offenders for specific crimes as a metric of the relative harm created by these crimes. The article shows how crimes that are different in nature count as creating equal amounts of harm and criticizes the fact that proponents of CHIs do not discuss the validity of their metric in any detail. Prior critiques of CHIs are reviewed, and the article discusses whether the Cambridge CHI actually passes a “three-pronged test” proposed by the creators of the index. The article reviews a number of claims that the Cambridge CHI rests on and concludes that such indices do not offer valid measurements of crime harm.