The Concept and Measurement of Violence and Abuse in Health and Justice Fields: Toward a Framework Aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Niels Blom (), Anastasia Fadeeva and Estela Capelas Barbosa
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Niels Blom: Violence and Society Centre, City, University of London, London EC1V 0HB, UK
Anastasia Fadeeva: Violence and Society Centre, City, University of London, London EC1V 0HB, UK
Estela Capelas Barbosa: Violence and Society Centre, City, University of London, London EC1V 0HB, UK

Social Sciences, 2023, vol. 12, issue 6, 1-15

Abstract: Violence reduction is a United Nations (UN) sustainable development goal (SDG) and is key to both public health and criminology. The collaboration between these fields has the potential to create and improve prevention strategies but has been hampered by the usage of different definitions and measurements. This paper explores the definitions and measurements of violence by the World Health Organization, UN, and Council of Europe to arrive at a harmonized framework aligned with the SDGs. Violence and abuse are defined by these organizations as intentional actions that (are likely to) lead to harm, irrespective of physicality or legality. When recording violence and abuse, health- and justice-based administrative systems use different codes which cannot directly be translated without resorting to broad overarching categories. Additionally, the identification of the number of victims, perpetrators, and events is challenging in these systems due to repeat victimization/offending, multiple victims/perpetrators, and multiple engagements with services associated with a single event. Furthermore, additional information on the victims (e.g., ethnicity) and events needs to be registered to evaluate progress toward the SDGs. We propose a framework to record violence that includes individual and event identifiers, forms of violence and abuse (including physical, sexual, and psychological), harm, and individual and event characteristics.

Keywords: abuse; crime; definition; justice; measurement; public health; violence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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