Coding rules
Status: working version, October 2026 — a public summary of the operating rules (Severity Index Codebook v0.5). The full Codebook will be published with Methodology v1.0. Licence: CC-BY 4.0.
What is coded
Each case-file codes harm on seven dimensions. Each dimension is scored on its own; scores are never added together, averaged or ranked.
| Code | Dimension | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| LIB | Liberty | Restriction of movement, detention, deportation, and sustained enclosure — physical, administrative or in a person's media environment — where an automated system was the proximate cause. |
| DIG | Dignity | Harm to self-respect and standing from being categorised, scored or flagged in ways that reduce a person to a statistical risk, including public stigmatisation and discrimination by protected characteristic. |
| EMP | Employment | Loss of work, denial of hire, blacklisting and damage to a career. |
| FAM | Family | Custody loss, forced separation, removal of children, death of a family member, and breakdown of family relationships caused by cascading harm. |
| HOU | Housing | Eviction, denial of a rental or mortgage, foreclosure, homelessness, forced relocation and district-level stigma affecting housing. |
| HEA | Health | Physical injury, denied or delayed care, psychological harm and death. |
| REP | Reputation | Persistent records, public exposure as a suspect, and records that outlive the formal resolution of a case. |
The dimensions are derived from Martha Nussbaum's central capabilities, with reputation added because automated records persist.
The scale
Scores run from 0 to 10. The scale is ordinal — a 6 is more severe than a 3, but not "twice" as severe.
| Score | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 0 | The dimension applies but was not affected |
| 1–2 | Minor or administrative impact |
| 3–4 | Tangible impact, limited in time or place |
| 5–6 | Significant impact with lasting consequences |
| 7–8 | Severe impact across major areas of life |
| 9–10 | Catastrophic impact; irreversibility likely or confirmed |
Every level has written criteria, an exclusion that separates it from the level above, a minimum evidence requirement and, where possible, an anchor case.
Tiebreakers. When a case sits between two levels, the lower level applies unless the specific criterion that defines the higher level is fully met. Dramatic but secondary facts do not raise a score.
When a score cannot be given
A cell can be in one of four states besides a number:
- 0 — applicable and not affected;
- N/A — the dimension does not apply (for example housing for a dependent child);
- INS (insufficient) — the evidence is too thin to score;
- SUSP (suspected) — harm is documented at population level but cannot be measured.
INS and SUSP are not zeros. They record what the public record does not show.
Confidence
Every score carries three further codes:
- Evidence confidence (High / Medium / Low) — how many independent, verified sources support the score and how closely they agree. High requires three or more verified sources from at least two source classes, agreeing within one level.
- Causal structure (Direct / Mediated / Contextual) — whether the system caused the harm directly, through human or institutional steps, or as part of a wider context.
- Causal certainty (High / Medium / Low) — how sure the record is about that causal structure.
Collective cases
For systems that affected many people, the score reflects the typical affected person. A higher score is used when a documented subset of at least a quarter of the affected population suffered more severe harm — or, regardless of size, when a subset suffered irreversible harm such as death, loss of custody or deportation.
Each case-file states its subject unit: individuals, households or organisations, following how the primary sources counted the people affected.
Time, oversight and irreversibility
Each case-file records a timeline of the harm, every point at which an external authority intervened (a court ruling, an inquiry, a regulator's decision, a parliamentary report) and whether that intervention stopped the harm fully, partly or only acknowledged it. It also records any point after which the harm could no longer be remedied — a death, a permanent separation, a loss that no later decision restored.
Changes
Rules change only through recorded, versioned revisions. A case-file states which version of the rules it was coded under.