Serious Crime Harm Lab

Identifying and responding to serious criminal harm in our communities

Purpose

Our laboratory has a clear mission: Identify those responsible for the most serious criminal harm in our communities and design evidence driven strategies to stop that harm.

We focus on the most consequential and complex offenders, including those involved in homicide, extreme violence, domestic abuse, and sexual violence against both adults and children. This is work at the sharp edge of public safety, where rigorous research has the potential to save lives and transform systems.

What sets us apart is unparalleled access to data. Through our Social Analytics Laboratory, we work with complete, current, and deeply integrated police datasets spanning all of Queensland - an extraordinary resource that allows us to uncover patterns, predict risks, and generate insights few others can.

About Us

The Serious Crime Harm Lab investigates the drivers, dynamics, and harms of serious crime by focusing on the top percentage of offenders who produce a disproportionate share of community harm. We combine rigorous quantitative analysis, in‑depth qualitative fieldwork, and sustained collaborative engagement with law enforcement, community organisations, and policymakers to produce robust, policy‑relevant research. Our work emphasises measuring harm rather than simply counting offences, enabling clear prioritisation of interventions where they will have the greatest practical impact.

Our aims are to improve understanding of high-harm offenders - including risk factors for and trajectories into high-harm offending - and to develop and evaluate intervention strategies to reduce or prevent harm. We prioritise translational research - turning evidence and findings into practical recommendations for practitioners and decision‑makers - and commit to ethical, transparent methods, rigorous governance and meaningful community involvement.

We also investigate the risk factors, aetiology, and predictors for offending, integrating these analyses across levels (individual, network, community, and structural) to inform targeted prevention and reduction strategies. Specifically, we aim to:

Identify individual risk factors and developmental pathways that increase the likelihood of becoming a high‑harm offender.
Map how offender networks form and operate, and determine the social, spatial, and economic conditions that sustain them.
Develop and validate predictive indicators that distinguish between higher‑ and lower‑harm trajectories, while evaluating ethical considerations and risks of bias in predictive models.
Test and evaluate interventions designed to prevent escalation into high‑harm offending, reduce ongoing harm, and disrupt organised activity, using mixed‑methods impact assessments.
Translate findings into actionable guidance for policing, public health, social services, and community partners to prioritise resources where they will deliver the greatest reduction in harm.

Our research is committed to methodological rigor, ethical safeguards, and active involvement of affected communities and practitioners to ensure findings are practical, equitable and defensible.

Six people standing together in an indoor room, smiling at the camera. The group includes four women and two men, with a whiteboard and windows in the background.

Our Team

Five people standing in a room with a government emblem on the wall. They are smiling and looking at the camera.

A man with glasses and a beard wearing a dark suit and white shirt standing at a podium, speaking into a microphone, with a large window and a banner with smiling children in the background.

A group of six people standing close together indoors, smiling at the camera. They are likely in a conference or meeting room with chairs and windows in the background.

Group of three people smiling at a conference, with a presentation slide about psychological health of first responders in the background, and other attendees interacting in the event hall.

A woman sitting at a desk with two police officers, reviewing documents and a booklet about domestic and family violence, in an office with large windows.

Six people standing together inside a room, smiling for the photo. Four women and two men, with a whiteboard and windows in the background.

A man with glasses and a collared shirt standing at a podium with a microphone, another man with glasses wearing a white shirt walking past, and a presentation slide on the wall that reads 'Where are we and where should we go? Investigating alleged s

Black and white portrait of Vilfredo Pareto, a man with a full beard, mustache, and short hair, wearing a coat and a shirt, looking to the side.

The Pareto Princple

The Pareto Principle, or “80/20 rule”, states that roughly 80% of outcomes stem from 20% of causes: a small subset of inputs typically produces the majority of effects. Originally noted by polymath Vilfredo Pareto observing that 80% of land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population, the principle has since been applied across domains, from business productivity and software defects to crime and harm, as a heuristic for identifying where concentrated effort yields outsized results.

At the Serious Crime Harm Lab, we apply the Pareto Principle to focus research and intervention on the relatively small groups, behaviours, and places that generate the greatest share of severe harm. By prioritising high-impact individuals and contexts - informed by rigorous data analysis, risk stratification, and harm-weighted metrics - we maximise the effectiveness of intervention and prevention strategies. Using this targeted approach conserves resources to reduce overall harm more efficiently, guide policy decisions, and design proportionate responses that address the root drivers of serious offending.