Quantifying the impact: From prevalence to harm in evaluating police misconduct

Purpose

To assess the prevalence and nature of police misconduct and discipline in Florida from 2012 to 2023. To measure the relative harm of criminal offenses committed by a subset of particularly deviant police.

Methods

We use official data from 241 law enforcement agencies to assess cases of serious police misconduct in 67 counties (N = 1103). The Pareto principle is used to understand the clustering of incidents and harm. Incident count and harm score are temporally examined in quarter-annual increments. Using Florida sentencing guidelines and the Cambridge Crime Harm Index (CCHI), harm scores were calculated for each offense type.

Results

We identify 24 categories of police misconduct. Perjury and failure to report had the highest incidence, followed by sexual offenses and drug- and alcohol-related misconduct. About 30% of counties account for 80% of all police misconduct incidents in Florida, while only 23% of counties account for 80% of the total harm inflicted.

Conclusions

Harm from police crime clusters more tightly geographically than incidents in traditional hot spots. Sex-related crime is high in both incidence and harm. We conclude the challenges to quantifying harm and future applications of harm indexing, as well as the implications regarding the harm of police sexual violence.