Criminology Blog Series – Narrow the Focus and Precisely Define the Problem

There are several of the “60 Small Steps” that are most applicable to food fraud prevention (Clarke and Eck 2005):

• “Be very crime specific (#6): “Your department will sometimes mount a crackdown on a particular crime such as auto crime or burglary, and you might be asked to map these offenses or provide other data to support the operation. But these categories are too broad for problem-oriented policing. They include too many different kinds of crimes, all of which need to be separately analyzed. […] You can see these crimes are committed for various motives, by different offenders, with varying degrees of organization, knowledge, and skills.”
• “Use the CHEERS test when defining problems (#14): “A problem is a recurring set of related harmful events in a community that members of the public expect the police to address. This definition draws attention to the six required elements of a problem: Community; Harm; Expectation; Events; Recurring; and Similarity. These elements are captured by the acronym CHEERS.”

Especially applicable to food fraud prevention from step #14 is the last CHEERS element:

“Similarity: The recurring events must have something in common. They may be committed by the same person, happen to the same type of victim, occur in the same types of locations, take place in similar circumstances, involve the same type of weapon, or have one or more other factors in common. Without common features, you have an ‘arbitrary collection of events,’ not a ‘problem.’ Common crime classifications – such as those used by the Uniform Crime Reports – are not helpful. Vehicle theft, for example, includes joyriding, thefts for chop shops, thefts for export to other countries, thefts for use in other crimes, and a host of other dissimilar events. So a cluster of vehicle thefts may not be a single problem. More information is needed.”

The details of the CHEERS concepts are included here:

• Community: “Members of the public must experience the harmful events.” Note: “community” can be broadly interpreted to include food consumers, regulators, or others.
• Harmful: “People or institutions must suffer harm. The harm can involve property loss or damage, injury or death, serious mental anguish, or undermining the capacity of the police. Illegality is not a defining characteristic of problems.”
• Expectation: “Some members of the community must expect the police to address the causes of the harm. Expectation should never be presumed, but must be evident through processes such as citizen calls, community meetings, press reports, or other means.” Again, the “community” could be a few influential and amplified members.
• Events: “You must be able to describe the type of event that makes up the problem. Problems are made up of discrete events.”
• Recurring: “These events must recur. Recurrence may be symptomatic of acute troubles or a chronic problem. Acute troubles suddenly appear, as in the case of a neighborhood with few vehicle break-ins suddenly having many such break-ins. Some acute troubles dissipate quickly, even if nothing is done. Others can become chronic problems if not addressed. […]  Chronic problems persist for a long time, as in the case of a prostitution stroll that has been located along one street for many years. Unless something is done, the events from chronic problems will continue to occur.”
• Similarity: (See above)”

This concept of ‘similarity’ is fundamental for data collection or review of incidents. The incidents – and use of the data – must be a consideration when evaluating the utility or value of a data set. That said, even an ‘arbitrary collection of events’ has value.