This article presents a new conceptual framework, known as HAVEN, for individual victim harm measurement, which solves three problems in victim harm measurement: data linkage across medical and legal systems; integration of log-normal distribution of harms into the framework; and prioritization of integrated systems data.
Valid and reliable measures of the harms to victims of crime are critical inputs to policy choices. Recent advances in cost-benefit methodology allow these measures to be directly estimated in causal models, but these models require individual- or event-level data. This article presents a new conceptual framework, known as HAVEN (Harms After Victimization: Experiences and Needs), for individual victim harm measurement. Guided by the conceptual framework, these models solve three critical problems in victim harm measurement: they motivate data linkage across medical and legal systems (and other) data; they integrate the log-normal distribution of harms into the framework and thereby include catastrophic costs as valid measures rather than exclude as outliers; and they prioritize integrated systems data (i.e. medical-legal) rather than single system measures of victimization harm. The conceptual framework also creates a dynamic framework to expand individual- and event-level harm measurement in future studies. (Published Abstract Provided)