Measuring the public's perceptions of crime seriousness: A review and the development of a scale

Abstract

Public assessments of crime seriousness have traditionally focused on the harmfulness and wrongfulness of offences yet often neglect to systematically integrate these dimensions with intent or consider the broader context of offence categories. Consequently, existing measures lack precision in both scoring methods and comparative analyses. This study introduces a new measurement scale that incorporates harmfulness, intent, and wrongfulness within the framework of offence categories. Drawing on survey responses from 242 adults who rated 37 offences from the Israeli Penal Code, we applied the method of Successive Intervals (SI) to develop a weighted crime seriousness index. Findings reveal that harmfulness is consistently the most influential factor in shaping public perceptions of crime seriousness, while the impact of intent and wrongfulness varies across different types of crimes. Incorporating category-level seriousness enhanced measurement accuracy, with some offences perceived as more serious due to their categorical context rather than their intrinsic attributes. Comparisons with legal sentencing patterns exposed both areas of alignment and divergence between public opinion and formal legal standards. By integrating all components of crime seriousness and offence categories using the SI scaling method, the proposed index offers a novel and precise tool to support research and policymaking, particularly in areas where public perceptions diverge from legal sentencing standards.

Keywords

Crime seriousness public perceptions successive interval scaling crime wrongfulness intent harmfulness

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