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Date: August 17, 2024 Sat
Time: 2:17 am
Time: 2:17 am
Results for social disorder and crime
1 results foundAuthor: Innes, Martin Title: Mapping and Measuring the Social Harms of Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour; Towards an Outcomes-Based Approach to Community Safety in Wales Summary: This document reports findings from an exploratory study designed to conceptually and empirically develop the concept of ‘social harm’. Social harm is defined as the negative collective impacts associated with an illegal or disorderly act, or social control intervention. The study had three key aims: 1) To establish a more robust conceptual definition of social harm in relation to the impacts of crime and disorder; 2) Reflecting this definition, to develop a more sophisticated method of measuring the distribution and intensity of social harm; 3) Apply these measures to test what insights they may afford in relation to how crime and disorder affects communities and neighbourhoods. Engagement with these aims is set against a backdrop where harm has become an increasingly influential idea in some areas of the criminal justice system. In particular, it is commonly used in relation to illegal narcotics and has acquired some traction in relation to measures designed to address serious and organised crime. These developments notwithstanding, wider uptake and use of the concept of harm has been inhibited by difficulties in deriving robust and stable measurements, as well as a lack of clarity in thinking about what precisely constitutes harm and how it differs from other measures. The work conducted for this study suggests that harm can be differentiated from several other allied concepts of risk, threat and vulnerability. Examining these helps to define and clarify the unique conceptual space occupied by the idea of harm. Orthodox approaches to measuring risk are based upon determining the likelihood of an event occurring in conjunction with its relative impact. Risks become threats when they are less prospective and more immediate. Vulnerability is concerned with the likelihood and capacity to be harmed. These ideas can be combined in order to identify the ‘risk of harm’ or ‘vulnerability to harm’. However, it can be seen that harm is unique in focusing upon actual negative impacts. The defining quality of a harm based framework is then that it attends to the impacts or effects of problems or issues. So whereas more orthodox measures of crime and disorder tend to be weighted towards prevalence, that is the amount of that issue that is occurring, focusing upon harm shifts attention to impact and consequences. The significance of this is that it recognises that in terms of understanding and mitigating the harms of crime and disorder, there might be a small number of incidents that impact quite heavily upon the public. Likewise, just because there is a highly prevalent issue in an area, it cannot be assumed that it is the ‘market mover’ in terms of shaping public attitudes and opinions. There are of course different kinds of harm that can be generated and experienced. Crime and disorder receives attention (at least in part) because of the harm that is done to victims. Whilst this form of individual harm is important, herein, the focus is explicitly upon the ‘social’ harm of crime. Adopting this approach reflects findings from an accumulating body of research evidence, that crime and disorder can be extremely consequential at the collective level in terms of negatively shaping the security, well‐being and resilience of communities and/or neighbourhoods. Details: Cardiff, Wales: Universities Police Science Institute, 2011. 33p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 7, 2013 at: http://wales.gov.uk/docs/caecd/research/130121-mapping-measuring-social-harms-crime-anti-social-behaviour-en.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://wales.gov.uk/docs/caecd/research/130121-mapping-measuring-social-harms-crime-anti-social-behaviour-en.pdf Shelf Number: 127530 Keywords: Antisocial Behavior (Wales, U.K.)Disorderly ConductDrug Abuse and CrimeEnvironmental DisorderNeighborhoods and CrimeSocial Disorder and Crime |