Poster #56 - Developing the Crime Harm Index in Macau: Compare between the Crime Harm and Crime Count

• In Event: ASC Poster Session II

Abstract

Research Question Based on the principle of the Cambridge Crime Harm Index, how
would a Macau Crime Harm Index be constructed? When crime events are analyzed
by severity and raw count, how do their distributions and trends differ within Macau?

Data and Methodology A total of 490 cases of the actual court sentencing outcomes
(Intermediate court) in Macau between 1st January 2023 and 31st December 2023 were
collected. After data processing, there are 156 cases of actual sentence outcomes which
only considered criminal offences to appeal were decided by different types of
sentencing outcomes (e.g. imprisonment, fine and probation, etc.) in Macau and were
translated to ‘days to imprisonment’ for the 24 crime categories and applied to the
database of Macau Crime. A comparative analysis of total case counts and aggregate
harm levels in criminal cases recorded in Macau between 1990 and 2023, categorized
by their occurrence timelines.

Findings The trends of crime count and crime harm share a similar pattern most of the
time, except a big reverse trend showed from 2006 to 2008. That indicates that during
those periods, there was more high harm but low frequency crime.

Author

• Hou Fong Pat, University of Macau