b'discourse continues to be disproportionately dominated by crime issues, the popular narrative from politicians, police, media and courts all support a profound paradox. THE POPULAR POLITICALThe popular political get tough on crime agenda andGET TOUGH ON CRIME AGENDA AND police crime fighting ethos has us fighting precisely the enemy we need to be treating in stopping the spread ofPOLICE CRIME FIGHTING ETHOS HAS violence.Aslow,deliberatepoliceanalysesofseriousUS FIGHTING PRECISELY THE ENEMY WE violent crime data assists us in more rationally defining the issues, people, circumstances, and places for more evi- NEED TO BE TREATING IN STOPPING THE dence-based police approaches. This article advocates that victim-offenders are precisely the vessels and networks ofSPREAD OF VIOLENCE. social contagion caught in the cycle of violence for whom policing, politicians and communities need to innovate for.this problem of equal treatment of crime by developing ameasurementtoolthatcalculatestheseriousnessof crimes according to their severity of harm. The Canadian Crime Severity Index (CCSI) assigns a weighted numerical value where homicide is now calculated more accurately in severity in comparison to more trivial. At present, policing does not employ harm reduction as its central mission. It continues to rely on crime reduc-Figure 1. Depiction of the Victim-Offender Cycle oftion to govern police performance and operational decision Violence and Opportunities for Disruption making, even when these measures are well known to be misleading (Boyce, 2015; Ratcliffe, 2014). When calculat-Recent police research on the victim-offender overlaping Canadian crime rates using crime counts, the sum of by Jones (2017), Sandall (2017) and Hiltz (2019), throughequally weighted offences is divided by the population, the stewardship of the University of Cambridge, supports aofferingadistortedmisrepresentationofcrimeandits philosophical shift about the traditional policing of violentrelated risk. crime. Well-intentioned practices that appear ethical andCurrently, there is no police operational use of the CCSI sensible may be cures that harm. This then poses themethod in Ontario, undermining informed decision making question, what works to prevent violence?in mitigating risk, planning and prevention efforts when Public Health approaches and Ontarios The Communityit comes to violence. Embracing these advancements in SafetyandWellBeingPlanningFramework(2018)place of convention can only move police agencies to a encouragespoliceandcommunitypartnerstoexploreposition of advantage in disrupting and reducing actual more effective ways of delivering police services beyondharms caused by violent crime. The successful application enforcement.Ifourcollectivesuccessisbasedonhowof CCSI measures are fundamental to effectively identify wellwesupportthesafetyandwell-beingofeverythe right people (as well as circumstances and places) for individual, how then should police better support thosetargeting risks of serious violence harm in guiding much-violent offenders experiencing disproportionate amountsneeded police and community resources.of human misery and suffering as victims caught in theThis brings us to the purpose of this article: to dem-cycle of violence?onstrate the existence of the victim-offender overlap, and Measuring Violent Crime advocate the benefits of simple and effective application Severity Harm of CCSI measures to police data for more informed evi-dence-based decision making. Academically conceptualized The most obvious yet noteworthy point is that all crimeby Lawrence Sherman in 1998, evidence-based policing is is not created equal, and the weaknesses of using crimea major driving force of contemporary modern-day policing counts alone to measure and direct police performanceinto the next decade (Ratcliffe 2018). In 2019, Shermans arewelldocumented(Sherman,2007,2013;Statisticspioneering police research strategy of targeting, testing Canada,2009;Ratcliffe;2014).Beginningin2009,theand tracking (Sherman 2013) was applied to a quanti-Methods Division of Statistics Canada worked to addresstative police research study applying CCSI weighted harm 18 H.Q. Summer 2020'