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Perceived crime seriousness
Journal of Criminal Justice 30 (2002) 623 – 632
Perceived crime seriousness Consensus and disparity Ying Keung Kwan*, Lai Lin Chiu, Wai Cheong Ip, Patrick Kwan Department of Applied Mathematics, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 306203 Hung Hom, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China
Abstract In this article, the statistical technique for setting up the consensus of perceived crime seriousness in previous studies is critically reviewed. The conventional method, when applied to a data set of crime seriousness, is found to have exaggerated the consensus because, by using a more appropriate model, which assumes perfect agreement in crime severity between subgroups, the consensus is reduced unanimously. By breaking down the population by gender, age, and educational level, sociodemographic differentials in crime seriousness are set up. The disparity is then further examined in details by paired comparisons between a target crime with fourteen other crimes. The three factors are all found to be important in affecting perceived crime seriousness. This conclusion is different from that of previous studies. The scaling method is found to be responsible for the difference. As the Thurstone method used in this study is more responsive and can produce more discriminating results, it is recommended for future research in crime severity. Finally, the implications of the findings on some important issues, like the appropriateness of legal penalty and the construction of a crime index, are discussed. D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction A substantial literature on the systematic evaluation of perceived crime seriousness has been published since the pioneer work of Sellin and Wolfgang (1964) (for example, Anderson & Newman, 1998; Parton, Hansel, & Stratton, 1991; Wilkins, 1980; Wolfgang, Figlio, Tracy, & Singer, 1985). Research on the subject has grown to include the normative consensus of crime seriousness (for example, Hansel, 1987; Lesieur & Lehman, 1975; Miethe, 1982). Emphasis has been placed on the agreement in
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86-852-27666962; fax: +86-852-23629045. E-mail address: [email protected] (Y.K. Kwan).
perceived seriousness of crime, as evidenced by some very strong correlation in seriousness scores between different subgroups. Relatively less attention has been paid to the disagreement. This article aims to study critically the use of correlation in setting up the consensus and concentrates more on the disparity of crime seriousness. By considering both the consensus and disparity of perceived crime seriousness, it is hoped to provide a better basis for discussing some important issues connected with crime seriousness. Perceived crime seriousness may provide a basis for discussing the legal penalty of a crime. Seriousness judgments are the chief determinants of public beliefs concerning appropriate penalties for crimes (Blumstein & Cohen, 1980; Hamilton & Rytina, 1980). The seriousness of a crime also affects legal reactions to that crime, from the probability that it will be reported to the police to the sentence that will
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be meted out (Skogan, 1984; Warr, 1989). Any large discrepancies found between the subjectively perceived crime seriousness with its legal penalty would raise one’s concern about the appropriateness of the legal penalty. For example, Kwan, Ip, and Kwan (2000) found that there was a very big difference between the legal penalty and the perceived seriousness of ‘drug offense’ in Hong Kong. Due to some historical reasons, Hong Kong Chinese have placed much more seriousness on the crime than that reflected by the legal penalty, which is based on the British Law. The extent to which perceived crime seriousness should be taken into account in determining legal penalties is a controversial issue. As legal penalty must be equal for all citizens, however, the discussion is meaningful only when there is strong agreement about perceived seriousness. A study of the effects of socioeconomic and demographic factors on perceived crime seriousness would be important in this aspect. It would set up some sociodemographic differentials in crime seriousness to indicate the extent to which people agree or disagree with each other about crime seriousness. Crime seriousness may provide a basis for determining the weights of crimes so that a weighted crime index may be constructed to measure the intensity of crime of a society (Kwan et al., 2000). The crime index so constructed would indicate the overall level of subjectively perceived crime intensity in the society. In cases where strong sociodemographic differentials and hence large disparity in crime seriousness are found, the intensity of crime can no longer be reflected by just one single overall index. It would be meaningful to construct different types of crime index so as to reflect the crime intensity perceived by different subgroups in the society. The study of agreement as well as disagreement in seriousness will reveal if different sets of weights need be built up in order to construct different types of crime index. Sociological discourse on crime seriousness began with Black’s (1979) argument that crime seriousness is not an objective attribute but is subjectively perceived among citizens. Hembroff (1987) showed that crime seriousness was an evaluation mediated by the social structural context in which it was embedded. Respondents’ perceptions of crime seriousness are complex phenomena resting on some attributes of crimes like victim harm and offender’s intentionality on the one hand and on respondents’ socioeconomic attributes on the other (Newman, 1976). Empirical agreement about crime seriousness, as documented by large amount of studies, on the one hand, had lent support to Durkheim’s interpretation of the criminal law as a distillation of important shared values and, on the other hand, had countered the conflict theory in sociology. Although emphasizing the consensus
without paying attention to the disparity of crime seriousness is understandable at times when normative consensus has not been documented, it is nevertheless one-sided. Some empirical differentials, which to a certain extent lend support to the conflict theory, may be established by studying the impact of socioeconomic and demographic factors on crime seriousness. A substantial seriousness-of-crime literature has been built up since the publication of the landmark work, ‘The Measurement of Delinquency,’ conducted by Sellin and Wolfgang (1964). Research on the subject has grown to include cross-cultural comparisons of seriousness ratings, as well as social consensus on the perceived seriousness of crimes (e.g., Normandeau, 1966; Rossi, Waite, Bose, & Berk, 1974). In the 1980s, measures of crime severity were developed in some very large-scale surveys: the National Survey of Crime Severity in the U.S.A. (Wolfgang et al., 1985) and the British Crime Survey in the UK (Pease, 1988). While the crime severity literature has been largely methodological, Warr (1989) studied the psychological mechanism of crime seriousness evaluation. It was found that there was considerably more structure and complexity to seriousness judgments than commonly supposed and that individuals differed in how they determined seriousness. Where crimes were perceived to be more wrong than harmful, seriousness mirrored wrongfulness. Where crimes were perceived to be more harmful than wrong, harmfulness predominated. There are two important methodological issues in seriousness-of-crime studies: the description of crimes and the scaling method of perceived seriousness. In these studies on crime severity, there have been two approaches for depicting crimes, namely, crime vignettes, and crime typologies. In crime vignettes, the descriptions of crimes vary according to the dimensions adopted like intentionality, victim harm, offender’s status, culpability, and the details input for each dimension (Forgas, 1980; Hansel, 1987; Scott & Al-Thakeb, 1980; Shaver, 1984; Wolfgang et al., 1985). There have been clear distinctions in seriousness for crimes with different descriptions of the specific elements (e.g., Sellin & Wolfgang, 1964). Crime typology, which may be conceived differently by respondents, on the other hand, is a composite term. Hansel (1987) found that there was significant disagreement in people’s conceptions of crime typologies in terms of the level of violence, amount of property harm, level of sex relatedness, and so on. There is, however, strong consensus about the seriousness of the crime typologies, as shown by the small variance for the seriousness scores (Parton et al., 1991). Concerning the scaling method of crime seriousness, the main problem for using a scale of, for example, eleven points for respondents to rate is that
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the scores so obtained may lie within a narrow range and hence not discriminating enough. The method of magnitude estimation has been used in Wolfgang et al. (1985). A crime is used as a standard and the respondent is required to rate this crime first and then the remaining value relative to the standard. Alternatively, two crimes with a very large difference in seriousness are given to the respondents (Warr, 1989) so that the respondent can gain some idea about the range of the seriousness of crimes. In this study, crime typology and the Thurstone scaling method were used. There are two reasons for using typologies to represent crimes. First, the results so obtained will be more readily comparable to the official statistics in Hong Kong. Second, Sellin and Wolfgang (1964) showed that the average seriousness score of a crime typology could be calculated from the scores of specific elements of crime vignettes. Thurstone scaling method is used to measure the seriousness of crimes because the method is sophisticated and responsive. It may produce more accurate results to differentiate the crime severity as perceived by different subgroups of the population. In the following sections, a brief account of the data set used in this study will be given, followed by a critical study of the use of correlation in measuring agreement, and hence disagreement, in crime seriousness. Crime seriousness differentials according to sex, age, and educational level will then be examined. To study in more details how the differentials in overall crime seriousness scores are constructed, paired comparisons of each crime with the other fourteen crimes will be examined. Finally, a discussion of the implications of the results of the study will be given.
Data The data used in this article came from a telephone survey conducted in Hong Kong in July 1997. It was an attempt to measure the perceived crime severity, in response to an article of Tai and Yiu (1994), the official statisticians, on the need of a weighted crime index for Hong Kong. In the study, fifteen crime typologies were selected according to the criteria: frequency of occurrence and legal penalty. They were rape; indecent assault; murder; serious assault; robbery; blackmail and intimidation; snatching; burglary; theft; deception, fraud, and forgery; drug offense; criminal damages; possession of arms; unlawful society offense; and bribery and corruption. Unlawful society offense, according to the laws of Hong Kong, refers to the event of inciting a person to become a member of an unlawful society, or procuring subscription or aid for an unlawful society. The unlawful societies in Hong Kong have
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their origin in Mainland China. It is believed that they moved their base to Hong Kong when the Communist Party took over China in 1950. Organized crime was a serious problem in the 1950s and 1960s. Bribery and corruption were widespread and generally accepted by the citizens as a way of getting things done before the setting up of the Independent Commission for Anti-Corruption in the early 1970s. Criminal damage refers to those crimes damaging another person’s property. Indecent assault is an indecent act on a woman or on a man without her or his consent. The fifteen crimes represented more than 80 percent of the total number of cases of crimes in the past twenty-five years. A random sample of one thousand telephone numbers was drawn. From each telephone call, a respondent aged eighteen or above was selected and was asked to compare the seriousness of two crimes, each against the other fourteen crimes, and make judgment about which was more serious. Eight hundred sixty-four respondents were successfully interviewed, making a total of 21,000 paired comparisons. For each pair of crimes, there were about two hundred replications, from which the probability of a crime being judged more serious than the other would be determined. The seriousness scores of the fifteen crimes were calculated, using the Thurstone scaling method.
Sociodemographic differentials in overall scores of crime seriousness Crime seriousness scores were calculated for the whole population (Table 1). While murder, rape, drug offense, and robbery were found to be the four most serious crimes, theft, snatching, criminal damages, and possession of arms were among the least serious ones. Breaking down the population by gender (male and female), age (eighteen to thirty, thirty-one to forty-five, and forty-six or above) and educational level (primary, secondary, and tertiary), subgroup scores were also calculated. The three age groups were formed so that the number of respondents within each age group was roughly the same. Significant correlation between subgroups was obtained in previous studies to indicate strong agreement about crime seriousness. Sellin and Wolfgang (1964) found strong correlation between the scores of police officers and college students. Similar results were found between other subgroups (Hsu, 1973; McCleary, O’Neil, Epperlein, Jones, & Gray, 1981), different countries (Akman, Andre, & Stanley, 1967), and between different cultures (Evans & Scott, 1984; Newman, 1976). High correlation between subgroup scores and aggregate scores were also reported in Rossi et al. (1974).
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Table 1 Crime seriousness scores for respondents of different sex, age group, and educational level Crime
Overall
Murder Rape Drug offense Robbery Blackmail Serious assault Bribery Unlawful society Deception fraud and forgery Indecent assault Burglary Snatching Possession of arms Criminal damages Theft
16.2 12.3 11.7 10.3 8.5 7.2 6.6 6.4 5.1 4.2 3.7 2.2 2.4 2.1 1.1
Sex
Age
Education
Male
Female
18 – 30
31 – 45
46 +
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
15.5 11.4 13.0 10.4 8.9 6.7 7.3 6.9 5.0 3.6 3.0 2.3 2.3 2.8 1.0
17.9 14.0 12.4 11.1 8.2 8.5 4.7 5.5 4.3 3.7 3.5 1.8 1.9 1.2 1.3
16.7 12.4 12.1 10.6 8.7 6.5 8.2 5.5 5.4 3.5 3.9 1.1 1.8 2.5 1.1
16.8 13.5 12.2 11.0 8.7 7.7 5.4 6.0 5.1 3.9 3.8 2.4 1.1 1.6 0.8
15.5 11.4 12.4 9.7 7.5 6.6 6.6 7.1 3.9 4.5 3.7 3.2 4.4 2.7 1.0
16.2 12.3 12.9 9.9 7.3 6.7 5.2 6.1 4.6 4.3 4.7 4.0 1.1 2.3 2.2
17.7 12.7 12.7 10.6 8.2 7.5 6.4 5.2 4.9 3.7 3.5 1.9 2.1 1.6 1.2
15.7 11.6 11.1 10.7 9.4 6.6 7.8 7.4 4.8 3.8 2.5 1.6 3.1 2.7 1.0
Collating aggregate scores with subgroup scores to show correlation in crime seriousness tends to exaggerate the strength of relation because the subgroup scores are actually components of the aggregate scores and hence part of the correlation would be spurious. Alternatively, the correlation coefficients between two subgroup scores can be used to show the degree of agreement. This is certainly an improvement, but is still not satisfactory. A regression line for two subgroup scores is only a hypothetical construction of consensus, artificially built up to minimize the square deviation of the subgroup scores to the regression line. It would still exaggerate the strength of relation, though to a lesser extent than the previous method. To measure the agreement, a regression ˆ = X, or alternatively X ˆ = Y (i.e., model of the form Y complete agreement between two subgroup scores X and Y) could be used. The model assumes perfect agreement between two subgroup scores and hence the correlation of determination, r2, will show the proportion of agreement of Y to X or of X to Y; and the value of 1 r2 will represent the proportional deviation of subgroup scores away from perfect agreement. In Table 2, correlations between subgroup scores and aggregate scores indicate nearly perfect agreement in crime seriousness. People share virtually the same perception on crime seriousness, irrespective of
their background in gender, age, and education. As explained, the results are exaggerated. If correlations between subgroup scores are used instead (Table 3), the values of r2 are reduced unanimously, though in varying degrees. For the agreement between males and females, the value of r2 is reduced from .98 to .93. For education, the lowest correlation is .88, for the agreement between people with primary education and people with tertiary education. For people of different ages, although the reduction is less significant, it is still observable. When the models assuming perfect agreement are used, the consensus is seen to weaken further. For consensus between males and females, the r2 values of .92 and .89 (Table 3) indicate 8 percent (for model ˆ = X) and 11 percent (for model X ˆ = Y), respectively, Y of disparity from complete agreement in crime seriousness between men and women. For education, smaller values of r2 are also found. The difference in perceived seriousness of people with primary education and those with secondary education, for example, is enlarged to 6 percent. Finally, reduction in agreement about crime seriousness for people of different age groups is also found. It may be concluded that the strength of agreement in crime seriousness has been overestimated in previous studies and that the use of a more appropriate model will weaken the strength of relation.
Table 2 Coefficient of determination, r2, of linear regression model on the relation between the seriousness scores for a subgroup and the overall population Gender
Overall population
Educational level
Age
Male
Female
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
18 – 30
31 – 45
46 +
.98
.98
.95
.99
.97
.98
.99
.93
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Table 3 Coefficient of determination, r2, of different regression models on the relation between seriousness scores for different subgroups
Using linear regression model Using model ˆ =X Y Using model ˆ =Y X
Gender
Educational level
Male and female
Primary and secondary
Primary and tertiary
Secondary and tertiary
18 – 30 and 31 – 45
18 – 30 and 46 +
31 – 45 and 46 +
.93
.98
.88
.95
.96
.93
.94
.92
.95
.87
.92
.96
.89
.88
.89
.94
.87
.94
.95
.92
.94
From the r2 values of perfect agreement model, it can be seen that age is the most important factor leading to larger disparities in perceived crime seriousness, while educational level is the least important. The overall agreement may conceal some big differences in specific crimes. To understand how the overall agreement is made up, the seriousness scores of the fifteen components of crimes need to be studied. When the scores of the fifteen crimes for males and females are compared, large discrepancies of 2.4, 2.6, 1.8, and 2.6 are found for serious crimes, ‘murder,’ ‘rape,’ ‘serious assault,’ and ‘bribery,’ respectively. This indicates that females place more emphasis on bodily harm than males. Males, on the other hand, pay more attention to crimes that are detrimental to the society as a whole. For example, males rate ‘bribery’ as more serious than females do. If the crimes were ranked according to their seriousness scores, this point becomes even more obvious. Examining the rank order of crime seriousness, it is interesting to find that in the eyes of males, ‘drug offense’ is even more serious than ‘rape,’ a judgment with which females do not agree. Comparing the seriousness scores for young people (eighteen to thirty) with those for old people (forty-six or above), one can find that there is good agreement about the evaluation of serious crimes like ‘murder’ and ‘rape.’ There are big differences, however, for the less serious crimes like ‘bribery,’ ‘unlawful society,’ ‘deception, fraud, and forgery,’ ‘snatching,’ and ‘possession of arms.’ Younger people place more emphasis on crimes like ‘bribery’ and ‘deception, fraud, and forgery,’ which violate directly the virtue of righteousness and honesty. Older people, on the other hand, give more seriousness ratings to crimes like ‘unlawful society,’ ‘snatching,’ and ‘possession of arms.’ In Hong Kong, organized crimes, which are associated with unlawful society, have been a more serious problem before 1970. Political unrests also broke out occasionally during these years. Hong Kong people aged forty-six or
Age
above certainly have more experience in this aspect. People with tertiary education also have different evaluation of crime seriousness when compared with people with primary education. The higher educated people put more seriousness concern on crimes like ‘blackmail,’ ‘bribery,’ ‘unlawful society,’ and ‘possession of arms.’ As educational level is positively related to wealth and social status, these emphases are understandable as ‘blackmail’ does harm to one’s wealth and ‘bribery’ has been realized as detrimental to the economy and political system in surrounding countries of Hong Kong, for example, Mainland China and some Southeast Asian countries. By contrast, the lower educated people put more emphasis on ‘drug offense,’ ‘burglary,’ ‘snatching,’ and ‘theft,’ which tend to have higher incidence rates in less affluent areas.
Sociodemographic seriousness differentials in paired comparisons of crimes The seriousness score of a crime is an overall indicator summarizing its relative seriousness as reflected by comparisons with the other fourteen crimes. As such, similarities in seriousness scores for two subgroups may have concealed some big differences in seriousness for some specific comparisons of crimes. For more detailed analysis of the agreement, and alternatively disagreement, about crime seriousness between two subgroups, the comparisons of a specific crime with the other fourteen crimes need to be examined. In the following, crimes with bigger subgroup disparities in perceived seriousness are to be focused and the seriousness scores are to be further elaborated into paired comparisons. Four crimes, namely, ‘murder,’ ‘rape,’ ‘serious assault,’ and ‘bribery’ were selected to study gender differences in perceived seriousness. From the column on ‘rape’ in Table 4, it can be found that 24
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Table 4 Proportion of men and women regarding crime i as more serious than crime j Crime j
Crime i Murder
Rape Indecent assault Murder Serious assault Robbery Blackmail Snatching Burglary Theft Deception fraud and forgery Drug offense Criminal damages Possession of arms Unlawful society Bribery
Rape
Men
Women
.82 .97
.76 * .96
1.00 .99 .94 1.00 .99 1.00 .96 .80 1.00 .98 .94 .92
1.00 .97 .95 1.00 .97 1.00 1.00 .80 1.00 .97 .90 .96
Men
Women
.96 .18 .91 .76 .77 1.00 .99 .99 .89 .57 .96 .86 .68 .75
.94 .24 * 1.00 * .84 * .78 1.00 .97 .97 .95 * .70 * .94 .92 * .69 .74
Serious assault
Bribery
Men
Women
Men
Women
.09 .65 .00
.00 * .64 .00
.29 .53 .92 .85 .93 .65 .11 .88 .80 .53 .26
.31 .65 * .95 .79 .95 .68 .15 .97 * .83 .62 * .30
.25 .86 .08 .74 .25 .35 .69 .68 .79 .58 .11 .72 .64 .32
.26 .85 .04 .70 .26 .30 .59 * .63 .67 * .41 * .11 .67 .44 * .11 *
* The proportions of men and of women are not equal at 5 percent level of significance.
On the whole, women have placed much less emphasis on ‘bribery.’ Significantly less women than men think that ‘bribery’ is more serious than ‘snatching’ or ‘theft.’ The gender differences are even larger on comparisons of ‘bribery’ with ‘deception, fraud, and forgery’ (a difference of 17 percent), ‘possession of arms’ (a difference of 20 percent), and ‘unlawful society’ (a difference of 21 percent). In contrast to ‘bribery,’ women place more emphasis on ‘serious assault’ than men do. A significantly larger propor-
percent of women regard ‘rape’ as more serious than ‘murder,’ while only 18 percent of men share this attitude. A smaller proportion of men think that ‘rape’ is more serious than ‘serious assault,’ ‘robbery,’ ‘drug offense,’ and ‘possession of arms.’ An overwhelming majority of the victims of this crime is female and this may be the underlying reason for the gender differences. For ‘murder,’ not much disparity in judgment can be found between men and women, except its comparison with ‘rape.’
Table 5 Proportion of respondents of different age groups (18 – 30, 46+) regarding crime i as more serious than crime j Crime j
Rape Indecent assault Murder Serious assault Robbery Blackmail Snatching Burglary Theft Deception fraud and forgery Drug offense Criminal damage Possession of arms Unlawful society Bribery
Crime i Possession of arms
Snatching
Unlawful society
Bribery
18 – 30
46 +
18 – 30
46 +
18 – 30
46 +
18 – 30
46 +
.05 .43 .00 .14 .10 .14 .29 .29 .33 .33 .00 .38
.37 * .68 * .05 * .32 * .11 .26 * .47 * .47 * .53 * .58 * .10 * .63 *
.00 .38 .00 .08 .00 .00
.00 .38 .00 .13 .06 * .19 *
.25 * .36
.43 * .81 * .45 * .00 * .50 .53 * .15 * .28 *
.35 * .70 * .00 * .50 * .45 * .60 * .85 * .75 * .80 * .65 .10 .60 .75 *
.40 .35
.27 .52 .14 .04 .48 .71 .30 .12
.25 .55 .10 .40 .20 .30 .70 .60 .60 .60 .10 .60 .60
.29 .82 .12 .88 .29 .53 .88 .88 .94 .71 .12 .76 .65 .35
.24 * .96 * .08 * .72 * .24 * .32 .72 * .68 * .84 * .64 .12 .72 .64 .32
.65
.68
* The proportions of respondents aged 18 – 30 and of respondents aged 46+ are not equal at 5 percent level of significance.
Y.K. Kwan et al. / Journal of Criminal Justice 30 (2002) 623–632
tion of women think that it is more serious than ‘blackmail,’ ‘criminal damage,’ and ‘unlawful society.’ To study age impact on perceived seriousness, four crimes were selected. They are ‘possession of arms,’ ‘snatching,’ ‘unlawful society,’ and ‘bribery.’ The results are summarized in Table 5. Very big differences are found between the judgement of younger people (eighteen to thirty) and older people (forty-six or above). It is interesting to find that 37 percent of older people think that ‘possession of arms’ is even more serious than ‘rape,’ while only 5 percent of younger people think so. Perhaps, older people have experienced the Second World War and social unrest during the 1950s and 1960s, so that the crime is associated with war and violence in their mind. Similar results are also obtained when ‘possession of arms’ is compared with the other crimes, with three exceptions. When compared with ‘robbery’ and ‘bribery,’ the older people and the younger people share similar opinions. When compared with ‘unlawful society,’ an even larger proportion of younger people (40 percent) than older people (25 percent) rate it as more serious. Again, this may be attributed to older people’s personal experiences in which organized crime has been a serious problem in Hong Kong in the 1950s and the 1960s, before the birth of the younger generations. Older people also place more seriousness in ‘snatching.’ Nineteen percent of them think that the crime is more serious than ‘blackmail,’ whereas not
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even one youngster has this judgement. More of the former group than the latter think that the crime is more serious than each of ‘burglary,’ ‘theft,’ and ‘deception, fraud, and forgery.’ During wars and social unrest, snatching would occur frequently and older people should have more personal experiences of the crime. It is natural that they would regard the crime as more serious than other age groups. When comparing ‘snatching’ with ‘unlawful society’ and ‘possession of arms,’ however, a smaller percentage of older people than younger people think that it is more serious. The seriousness scores of ‘unlawful society’ are higher for older people than for younger people. Relatively large differences are found for paired comparisons of the crime with ‘robbery,’ ‘blackmail,’ and ‘theft.’ For all these comparisons, the proportion of older people considering the crime as more serious has exceeded that of younger people by more than 20 percent. On the other hand, younger people place more seriousness than older people do on ‘bribery.’ A much larger percentage of younger people opine that ‘bribery’ is more serious than ‘blackmail,’ ‘burglary,’ and ‘serious assault.’ Before the setting up of the Independent Commission for Anti-Corruption by the Hong Kong government in the 1970s, corruption and bribery had been widespread, so much so that the crime might be ‘accepted’ by the population as a normal practice in getting things done. This may be the reason for older people placing less emphasis on the crime. Nonetheless, an exception could be
Table 6 Proportion of respondents with different educational levels (primary, tertiary) regarding crime i as more serious than crime j Crime j
Crime i Bribery
Rape Indecent assault Murder Serious assault Robbery Blackmail Snatching Burglary Theft Deception fraud and forgery Drug offense Criminal damage Possession of arms Unlawful society Bribery
Snatching
Burglary
Blackmail
Primary
Tertiary
Primary
Tertiary
Primary
.21 .84 .05 .63 .26 .26 .53 .42 .58 .58 .11 .63 .58 .26
.22 .87 .13 * .78 * .17 * .35 * .87 * .83 * .96 * .65 .13 .83 * .78 * .30
.00 .47 .00 .20 .00 .07
.00 .24 * .00 .05 * .05 * .05
.06 .41 .00 .24 .00 .12 .59
Tertiary .00 * .41 .04 * .15 * .04 * .04 * .44 *
.41 .85 .41 .00 .54 .91 .23 .47
.56 * .68 * .28 * .00 .50 .58 * .17 .13 *
.85 .65 .07 .54 .91 .38 .58
1.00 * .36 * .00 * .64 * .58 * .25 * .17 *
Primary
Tertiary
.19 .50 .06 .31 .13
.25 .92 * .08 .71 * .33 *
.93 .88 .92 .82 .36 .85 1.00 .54 .74
.95 .96 * .96 .80 .47 * .77 * .77 * .46 .65 *
* The proportions of respondents with primary education and of respondents with tertiary education are not equal at 5 percent level of significance.
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found: whereas 82 percent of younger people think that ‘bribery’ is more serious than ‘indecent assault,’ a larger percentage, 96 percent, of older people think so. Four crimes, ‘bribery,’ ‘snatching,’ burglary,’ and ‘blackmail’ were selected to study the disparities in crime seriousness between people with primary education and with tertiary education (Table 6). Very big differences in their perceived seriousness can be found in pair-wise comparisons. For example, while 42 percent of people with primary education judge ‘bribery’ as more serious than ‘burglary,’ 83 percent of people with tertiary education think so. Large differences in perceived seriousness are observed for the paired comparisons of ‘bribery’ with ‘snatching,’ ‘theft,’ ‘criminal damage,’ and ‘possession of arms.’ It seems that the higher educated realizes more than the lower educated the detrimental effects of ‘bribery.’ The only exception is that a larger proportion of people with primary education than people with tertiary education think that ‘bribery’ is more serious than ‘robbery.’ It can be seen from Table 6 that the lower educated places more seriousness than the higher educated in ‘snatching’ and ‘burglary.’ As these two crimes are normally more widespread in some less wealthy regions of the city, and as education and income are positively related, these two crimes should be more of a worry for the lower educated than for the higher educated. Perhaps, this is the underlying reason for the educational differential in the seriousness scores. A much larger proportion of the lower educated people thinks that ‘snatching’ is more serious than ‘possession of arms,’ ‘indecent assault,’ and ‘serious assault.’ There is one exception: when compared with ‘burglary,’ a larger proportion of people with tertiary education than people with primary education think that ‘snatching’ is more serious. Comparing ‘burglary’ with the other crimes, very big differences are found for ‘bribery,’ ‘possession of arms,’ and ‘deception, fraud, and forgery.’ The only exception is ‘criminal damage’ on which the higher educated people have placed more seriousness than the lower educated. A much larger percentage of the higher educated than the lower educated think that ‘blackmail’ is more serious than ‘indecent assault’ and ‘serious assault.’ Furthermore, 33 percent of people with tertiary education as compared with 13 percent of people with primary education judge ‘blackmail’ as more serious than ‘robbery.’ Although the overall seriousness score of ‘blackmail’ is higher for higher educated people, a larger proportion of people with primary education have regarded ‘blackmail’ as more serious than ‘criminal damage,’ ‘possession of arms,’ ‘unlawful society,’ and ‘bribery.’
Discussion The findings of this study substantiated the sociologists’ hypothesis that crime seriousness is an evaluation mediated by the social structural context in which it is embedded. The evaluation reflects the respondents’ socioeconomic attributes. It was found that people with different age, gender, and educational level have different judgement about the seriousness of crimes. The reasons for the differences are not difficult to speculate: crimes are judged according to one’s personal interests and experiences, which in turn are related to such sociodemographic attributes like age, sex, and occupation. For example, women rate ‘rape’ as a more serious crime than men since women are more likely to be a victim of the crime. Older people regard ‘possession of arms’ as more serious than younger people because older people in Hong Kong have lived through social unrest and wars before 1970, which younger people have never experienced. People with tertiary education tend to regard ‘blackmail’ as more serious than people with primary education because they are economically better off and more likely to be a victim of the crime. These findings, however, are different from those of previous studies in which no substantial sociodemographic (age, sex, and education) differentials in perceived seriousness of crimes have been found (Warr, 1989; Wolfgang et al., 1985). In contrast to the findings in crime seriousness, previous studies on concern about crime found some substantial variation in crime concern according to socioeconomic and demographic factors. Carrying out a regional study in the United States, Lewis and Salem (1986) found that regions with social deprivation and higher crime rates tended to have higher scores on ‘fear of crime.’ Similar results have been found in the UK (Box, Hale, & Glen, 1988; Smith, 1983). Walker (1994) studied the impact of ethnicity on three aspects of concern, i.e., ‘fear,’ ‘worries,’ and ‘problems.’ Her results showed that there was a strong relation between ethnic groups and the three aspects of concern, and that the three aspects were strongly correlated within each ethnic group. Since perceived crime seriousness is another aspect of people’s attitudes towards crime, it is expected that perceived crime seriousness would also be affected by socioeconomic and demographic factors. Moreover, Warr and Stafford (1983) showed that the degree to which different crimes were feared was a multiplicative function of the perceived risk of offenses (i.e., the subjective probability they will occur) and the perceived seriousness of offenses. Hence, fear of crime and its perceived seriousness are closely related. As substantial socioeconomic and demographic differentials in fear of crime have been
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set up, it is reasonable to expect that there are also differentials in perceived crime seriousness, as the present study found. The reason for there being no substantial sociodemographic differentials in crime seriousness in previous studies may be a methodological one. The method of magnitude estimation has been used to measure perceived seriousness of crimes (Wolfgang et al., 1985). From a set of crimes, one is selected as a standard. The respondent is first asked to assign the standard a value. He/she is then instructed to assign to the remaining crimes values relative to the standard. The method is used because when a respondent is asked to rate the seriousness of a set of crimes on a scale of, say, eleven points (zero to ten), the respondent may think that all the crimes are serious and the scores will then lie within a narrow range. Hence, the results will not be discriminating. Warr (1989) used another technique to overcome this difficulty. In his study, respondents were first asked to rate the seriousness of two offenses ranging from petty crimes (trespassing and petty vandalism) to very serious crimes (multiple homicide), so that the respondents could gain some idea about the range of the seriousness of crime. Theoretically, the method of magnitude estimation can widen the range of seriousness scores and improve the discriminating power of the results, but practically, the method is not easy to implement. The method requires that respondents have a common understanding of the task they have been asked to perform and that considerable efforts need to be made in training respondents to meet the assumptions of magnitude estimation. There was evidence the requirement had not been achieved when the method was applied in Wolfgang’s study (Parton et al., 1991). Paired comparisons were used in this study. Two crimes were presented to a respondent at a time, and he was asked to make judgment about which was the more serious. The method was simple and did not require any training for the respondents. When the seriousness scores of Warr’s study were compared with those of the present study, a big difference in dispersion between the two sets of scores was found. The scores of the thirty-one crimes in the former study had a minimum of 3.10 and a maximum of 9.86. The mean score was 7.01 and the standard deviation was 1.81. The scores of the fifteen crimes in this study had a minimum of 1.11 and a maximum of 16.68. The mean score was 6.67 and the standard deviation was 4.55. As a result, the seriousness scores for the present study had a much wider range. It also had a much larger coefficient of variation (68.2 percent) than Warr’s study (25.8 percent). It can be concluded that in measuring crime seriousness, the Thurstone method using paired comparisons is a
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more responsive method that can give more discriminating results. The Thurstone scaling method is therefore recommended for future research in measuring crime severity. The causal mechanisms that guide public perceptions and evaluations of crime is an important topic of social psychology of crime. Wrongfulness (i.e., immorality of the act) and harm done to the victim have been suggested as the two main underlying dimensions for seriousness judgment. When crimes are perceived to be more harmful than wrong, harmfulness predominates in the serious judgment, and vice versa. In fact, crimes may be perceived along other dimensions like violence-involved, propertyrelated, sex-related, and the degree being personal. The way respondents arrive at crime severity judgment is an important topic in social psychology and certainly needs more future research. Nevertheless, crime severity is still very important: it is a simple indicator of the relative importance of crimes, subjectively perceived by the citizens. In this aspect, it cannot be substituted by ‘wrongfulness,’ ‘harmfulness,’ or by other attitudes towards crimes like ‘fear,’ ‘worry,’ and ‘problem.’ In so far as seriousness judgments being the chief determinants of public beliefs concerning appropriate penalties for crimes, a strong normative consensus of crime would support the social agreement of the appropriate penalties for crimes. This study showed that consensus of crime seriousness was exaggerated in previous studies. When a more appropriate method was used to measure agreement, consensus of crime seriousness was weakened to a certain extent. Despite these, normative consensus of crime seriousness could still be maintained. Using the model of perfect agreement, the smallest coefficient of determination still had a value of .87, indicating only a small (13 percent) deviation from perfect agreement, and most of the values of coefficient of determination were still .92 or above. While normative consensus of crime seriousness supports equal penalty for all, sociodemographic differentials in crime seriousness, on the other hand, indicate that different subgroups of a society tend to have different evaluations on crime seriousness, and hence different views on the appropriateness of legal penalty of crime. If differentials are strong, there would be conflicting evaluation on the appropriateness of legal penalty. As a result, there are two types of discrepancy between perceived crime seriousness and legal penalty. One refers to the deviation of the legal penalty from that implied by the aggregate seriousness score of a crime, and this has been an important topic in the seriousness-of-crime studies. Another belongs to the discrepancies of legal penalty from those measured by the serious scores of differ-
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ent subgroups. Crime severity differentials, in fact, indicate not only the divergent feelings of different subgroups of a society towards the appropriateness of legal penalty of crime, but also the different feelings about the intensity of crime in the society. If differentials are strong, different types of crime index with different sets of weights will be needed. Although the disparity in crime seriousness found in this study did not justify an urgent need in constructing different types of crime index, it nevertheless drew attention to such a need. As crime seriousness is socially determined, regular surveys may be needed if changes in evaluation are to be detected and documented.
References Akman, D., Andre, N., & Stanley, T. (1967). The measurement of delinquency in Canada. Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science, 39, 330 – 337. Anderson, P. R., & Newman, D. J. (1998). Introduction to criminal justice. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Black, D. (1979). Common sense in the sociology of law. American Sociological Review, 44, 18 – 27. Blumstein, A., & Cohen, J. (1980). Sentencing of convicted offenders: an analysis of the public’s view. Law and Society Review, 14, 233 – 261. Box, S., Hale, C., & Glen, A. (1988). Explaining fear of crime. British Journal of Criminology, 28, 340 – 356. Evans, S., & Scott, J. (1984). The seriousness of crime cross-culturally, the impact of religiosity. Criminology, 22, 35 – 59. Forgas, J. P. (1980). Images of crime: a multidimensional analysis of individual differences in crime perception. International Journal of Psychology, 15, 287 – 299. Hamilton, V. L., & Rytina, S. (1980). Social concensus on norms of justice: should the punishment fit the crime? American Journal of Sociology, 85, 1117 – 1144. Hansel, M. (1987). Citizen crime stereotypes-normative consensus revisited. Criminology, 25, 455 – 485. Hembroff, L. A. (1987). Seriousness of acts and social contexts: a test of Black’s theory of behavior of law. American Journal of Sociology, 93, 322 – 347. Hsu, M. (1973). Cultural and sexual differences on the judgment of criminal offenses: a replication study of the measurement of delinquency. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 64, 348 – 353. Kwan, Y. K., Ip, W. C., & Kwan, P. (2000). A crime index with Thurstone’s scaling of crime severity. Journal of Criminal Justice, 28, 237 – 244. Lesieur, H., & Lehman, P. (1975). Remeasuring delinquency: a replication and a critique. British Journal of Criminology, 15, 69 – 80.
Lewis, D. A., & Salem, G. (1986). Fear of crime, incivility and the production of a social problem. New Brunswick, NJ: Oxford. McCleary, R., O’Neil, M., Epperlein, T., Jones, G., & Gray, R. (1981). Effects of legal education and work experience on perceptions of crime seriousness. Social Problems, 28, 276 – 289. Miethe, T. (1982). Public consensus on crime seriousness: normative structure or methodological artifact. Criminology, 20, 515 – 526. Newman, G. (1976). Comparative deviance. New York: Elsevier. Normandeau, A. (1966). The measurement of delinquency in Montreal. Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science, 57, 172 – 177. Parton, D. A., Hansel, M., & Stratton, J. R. (1991). Measuring crime seriousness: lessons from the National Survey of Crime Security. British Journal of Criminology, 31, 72 – 85. Pease, K. (1988). Judgments of crime seriousness: findings from the 1984 British Crime Survey. London: Home Office. Rossi, P., Waite, E., Bose, C., & Berk, R. (1974). Seriousness of crime: normative structure and individual differences. American Sociological Review, 39, 224 – 237. Scott, J. E., & Al-Thakeb, F. (1980). Perceptions of deviance cross-culturally. In G. R. Newman (Ed.), Crime and deviance: a comparative perspective ( pp. 42 – 67). London: Sage Publications. Sellin, T., & Wolfgang, M. (1964). The measurement of delinquency. New York: Wiley. Shaver, K. G. (1984). Attribution of blame: causality, responsibility, and blameworthiness. New York: Springer-Verlag. Skogan, W. G. (1984). The validity of official crime statistics: an empirical evaluation. Social Science Quarterly, 55, 25 – 38. Smith, D. (1983). A survey of Londoners: police and people in London. London: Policy Studies Institute. Tai, H. S., & Yiu, F. K. H. (1994). Measurement of crime. Bulletin Hong Kong Statistics Society, 17, 6 – 9. Walker, M. A. (1994). Measuring concern about crime. British Journal of Criminology, 34, 366 – 378. Warr, M. (1989). What is the perceived seriousness of crimes? Criminology, 27, 795 – 821. Warr, M., & Stafford, M. (1983). Fear of victimization: a look at the proximate causes. Social Forces, 61, 1033 – 1043. Wilkins, L. T. (1980). World crime: to measure or not to measure? In G. R. Newman (Ed.), Crime and deviance: a comparative perspective ( pp. 17 – 41). London: Sage Publications. Wolfgang, M. E., Figlio, R. M., Tracy, P. E., & Singer, S. I. (1985). The national survey of crime severity. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Perceived crime seriousness Consensus and disparity Ying Keung Kwan*, Lai Lin Chiu, Wai Cheong Ip, Patrick Kwan Department of Applied Mathematics, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 306203 Hung Hom, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China
Abstract In this article, the statistical technique for setting up the consensus of perceived crime seriousness in previous studies is critically reviewed. The conventional method, when applied to a data set of crime seriousness, is found to have exaggerated the consensus because, by using a more appropriate model, which assumes perfect agreement in crime severity between subgroups, the consensus is reduced unanimously. By breaking down the population by gender, age, and educational level, sociodemographic differentials in crime seriousness are set up. The disparity is then further examined in details by paired comparisons between a target crime with fourteen other crimes. The three factors are all found to be important in affecting perceived crime seriousness. This conclusion is different from that of previous studies. The scaling method is found to be responsible for the difference. As the Thurstone method used in this study is more responsive and can produce more discriminating results, it is recommended for future research in crime severity. Finally, the implications of the findings on some important issues, like the appropriateness of legal penalty and the construction of a crime index, are discussed. D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction A substantial literature on the systematic evaluation of perceived crime seriousness has been published since the pioneer work of Sellin and Wolfgang (1964) (for example, Anderson & Newman, 1998; Parton, Hansel, & Stratton, 1991; Wilkins, 1980; Wolfgang, Figlio, Tracy, & Singer, 1985). Research on the subject has grown to include the normative consensus of crime seriousness (for example, Hansel, 1987; Lesieur & Lehman, 1975; Miethe, 1982). Emphasis has been placed on the agreement in
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86-852-27666962; fax: +86-852-23629045. E-mail address: [email protected] (Y.K. Kwan).
perceived seriousness of crime, as evidenced by some very strong correlation in seriousness scores between different subgroups. Relatively less attention has been paid to the disagreement. This article aims to study critically the use of correlation in setting up the consensus and concentrates more on the disparity of crime seriousness. By considering both the consensus and disparity of perceived crime seriousness, it is hoped to provide a better basis for discussing some important issues connected with crime seriousness. Perceived crime seriousness may provide a basis for discussing the legal penalty of a crime. Seriousness judgments are the chief determinants of public beliefs concerning appropriate penalties for crimes (Blumstein & Cohen, 1980; Hamilton & Rytina, 1980). The seriousness of a crime also affects legal reactions to that crime, from the probability that it will be reported to the police to the sentence that will
0047-2352/02/$ – see front matter D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 0 4 7 - 2 3 5 2 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 1 9 4 - 0
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be meted out (Skogan, 1984; Warr, 1989). Any large discrepancies found between the subjectively perceived crime seriousness with its legal penalty would raise one’s concern about the appropriateness of the legal penalty. For example, Kwan, Ip, and Kwan (2000) found that there was a very big difference between the legal penalty and the perceived seriousness of ‘drug offense’ in Hong Kong. Due to some historical reasons, Hong Kong Chinese have placed much more seriousness on the crime than that reflected by the legal penalty, which is based on the British Law. The extent to which perceived crime seriousness should be taken into account in determining legal penalties is a controversial issue. As legal penalty must be equal for all citizens, however, the discussion is meaningful only when there is strong agreement about perceived seriousness. A study of the effects of socioeconomic and demographic factors on perceived crime seriousness would be important in this aspect. It would set up some sociodemographic differentials in crime seriousness to indicate the extent to which people agree or disagree with each other about crime seriousness. Crime seriousness may provide a basis for determining the weights of crimes so that a weighted crime index may be constructed to measure the intensity of crime of a society (Kwan et al., 2000). The crime index so constructed would indicate the overall level of subjectively perceived crime intensity in the society. In cases where strong sociodemographic differentials and hence large disparity in crime seriousness are found, the intensity of crime can no longer be reflected by just one single overall index. It would be meaningful to construct different types of crime index so as to reflect the crime intensity perceived by different subgroups in the society. The study of agreement as well as disagreement in seriousness will reveal if different sets of weights need be built up in order to construct different types of crime index. Sociological discourse on crime seriousness began with Black’s (1979) argument that crime seriousness is not an objective attribute but is subjectively perceived among citizens. Hembroff (1987) showed that crime seriousness was an evaluation mediated by the social structural context in which it was embedded. Respondents’ perceptions of crime seriousness are complex phenomena resting on some attributes of crimes like victim harm and offender’s intentionality on the one hand and on respondents’ socioeconomic attributes on the other (Newman, 1976). Empirical agreement about crime seriousness, as documented by large amount of studies, on the one hand, had lent support to Durkheim’s interpretation of the criminal law as a distillation of important shared values and, on the other hand, had countered the conflict theory in sociology. Although emphasizing the consensus
without paying attention to the disparity of crime seriousness is understandable at times when normative consensus has not been documented, it is nevertheless one-sided. Some empirical differentials, which to a certain extent lend support to the conflict theory, may be established by studying the impact of socioeconomic and demographic factors on crime seriousness. A substantial seriousness-of-crime literature has been built up since the publication of the landmark work, ‘The Measurement of Delinquency,’ conducted by Sellin and Wolfgang (1964). Research on the subject has grown to include cross-cultural comparisons of seriousness ratings, as well as social consensus on the perceived seriousness of crimes (e.g., Normandeau, 1966; Rossi, Waite, Bose, & Berk, 1974). In the 1980s, measures of crime severity were developed in some very large-scale surveys: the National Survey of Crime Severity in the U.S.A. (Wolfgang et al., 1985) and the British Crime Survey in the UK (Pease, 1988). While the crime severity literature has been largely methodological, Warr (1989) studied the psychological mechanism of crime seriousness evaluation. It was found that there was considerably more structure and complexity to seriousness judgments than commonly supposed and that individuals differed in how they determined seriousness. Where crimes were perceived to be more wrong than harmful, seriousness mirrored wrongfulness. Where crimes were perceived to be more harmful than wrong, harmfulness predominated. There are two important methodological issues in seriousness-of-crime studies: the description of crimes and the scaling method of perceived seriousness. In these studies on crime severity, there have been two approaches for depicting crimes, namely, crime vignettes, and crime typologies. In crime vignettes, the descriptions of crimes vary according to the dimensions adopted like intentionality, victim harm, offender’s status, culpability, and the details input for each dimension (Forgas, 1980; Hansel, 1987; Scott & Al-Thakeb, 1980; Shaver, 1984; Wolfgang et al., 1985). There have been clear distinctions in seriousness for crimes with different descriptions of the specific elements (e.g., Sellin & Wolfgang, 1964). Crime typology, which may be conceived differently by respondents, on the other hand, is a composite term. Hansel (1987) found that there was significant disagreement in people’s conceptions of crime typologies in terms of the level of violence, amount of property harm, level of sex relatedness, and so on. There is, however, strong consensus about the seriousness of the crime typologies, as shown by the small variance for the seriousness scores (Parton et al., 1991). Concerning the scaling method of crime seriousness, the main problem for using a scale of, for example, eleven points for respondents to rate is that
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the scores so obtained may lie within a narrow range and hence not discriminating enough. The method of magnitude estimation has been used in Wolfgang et al. (1985). A crime is used as a standard and the respondent is required to rate this crime first and then the remaining value relative to the standard. Alternatively, two crimes with a very large difference in seriousness are given to the respondents (Warr, 1989) so that the respondent can gain some idea about the range of the seriousness of crimes. In this study, crime typology and the Thurstone scaling method were used. There are two reasons for using typologies to represent crimes. First, the results so obtained will be more readily comparable to the official statistics in Hong Kong. Second, Sellin and Wolfgang (1964) showed that the average seriousness score of a crime typology could be calculated from the scores of specific elements of crime vignettes. Thurstone scaling method is used to measure the seriousness of crimes because the method is sophisticated and responsive. It may produce more accurate results to differentiate the crime severity as perceived by different subgroups of the population. In the following sections, a brief account of the data set used in this study will be given, followed by a critical study of the use of correlation in measuring agreement, and hence disagreement, in crime seriousness. Crime seriousness differentials according to sex, age, and educational level will then be examined. To study in more details how the differentials in overall crime seriousness scores are constructed, paired comparisons of each crime with the other fourteen crimes will be examined. Finally, a discussion of the implications of the results of the study will be given.
Data The data used in this article came from a telephone survey conducted in Hong Kong in July 1997. It was an attempt to measure the perceived crime severity, in response to an article of Tai and Yiu (1994), the official statisticians, on the need of a weighted crime index for Hong Kong. In the study, fifteen crime typologies were selected according to the criteria: frequency of occurrence and legal penalty. They were rape; indecent assault; murder; serious assault; robbery; blackmail and intimidation; snatching; burglary; theft; deception, fraud, and forgery; drug offense; criminal damages; possession of arms; unlawful society offense; and bribery and corruption. Unlawful society offense, according to the laws of Hong Kong, refers to the event of inciting a person to become a member of an unlawful society, or procuring subscription or aid for an unlawful society. The unlawful societies in Hong Kong have
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their origin in Mainland China. It is believed that they moved their base to Hong Kong when the Communist Party took over China in 1950. Organized crime was a serious problem in the 1950s and 1960s. Bribery and corruption were widespread and generally accepted by the citizens as a way of getting things done before the setting up of the Independent Commission for Anti-Corruption in the early 1970s. Criminal damage refers to those crimes damaging another person’s property. Indecent assault is an indecent act on a woman or on a man without her or his consent. The fifteen crimes represented more than 80 percent of the total number of cases of crimes in the past twenty-five years. A random sample of one thousand telephone numbers was drawn. From each telephone call, a respondent aged eighteen or above was selected and was asked to compare the seriousness of two crimes, each against the other fourteen crimes, and make judgment about which was more serious. Eight hundred sixty-four respondents were successfully interviewed, making a total of 21,000 paired comparisons. For each pair of crimes, there were about two hundred replications, from which the probability of a crime being judged more serious than the other would be determined. The seriousness scores of the fifteen crimes were calculated, using the Thurstone scaling method.
Sociodemographic differentials in overall scores of crime seriousness Crime seriousness scores were calculated for the whole population (Table 1). While murder, rape, drug offense, and robbery were found to be the four most serious crimes, theft, snatching, criminal damages, and possession of arms were among the least serious ones. Breaking down the population by gender (male and female), age (eighteen to thirty, thirty-one to forty-five, and forty-six or above) and educational level (primary, secondary, and tertiary), subgroup scores were also calculated. The three age groups were formed so that the number of respondents within each age group was roughly the same. Significant correlation between subgroups was obtained in previous studies to indicate strong agreement about crime seriousness. Sellin and Wolfgang (1964) found strong correlation between the scores of police officers and college students. Similar results were found between other subgroups (Hsu, 1973; McCleary, O’Neil, Epperlein, Jones, & Gray, 1981), different countries (Akman, Andre, & Stanley, 1967), and between different cultures (Evans & Scott, 1984; Newman, 1976). High correlation between subgroup scores and aggregate scores were also reported in Rossi et al. (1974).
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Table 1 Crime seriousness scores for respondents of different sex, age group, and educational level Crime
Overall
Murder Rape Drug offense Robbery Blackmail Serious assault Bribery Unlawful society Deception fraud and forgery Indecent assault Burglary Snatching Possession of arms Criminal damages Theft
16.2 12.3 11.7 10.3 8.5 7.2 6.6 6.4 5.1 4.2 3.7 2.2 2.4 2.1 1.1
Sex
Age
Education
Male
Female
18 – 30
31 – 45
46 +
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
15.5 11.4 13.0 10.4 8.9 6.7 7.3 6.9 5.0 3.6 3.0 2.3 2.3 2.8 1.0
17.9 14.0 12.4 11.1 8.2 8.5 4.7 5.5 4.3 3.7 3.5 1.8 1.9 1.2 1.3
16.7 12.4 12.1 10.6 8.7 6.5 8.2 5.5 5.4 3.5 3.9 1.1 1.8 2.5 1.1
16.8 13.5 12.2 11.0 8.7 7.7 5.4 6.0 5.1 3.9 3.8 2.4 1.1 1.6 0.8
15.5 11.4 12.4 9.7 7.5 6.6 6.6 7.1 3.9 4.5 3.7 3.2 4.4 2.7 1.0
16.2 12.3 12.9 9.9 7.3 6.7 5.2 6.1 4.6 4.3 4.7 4.0 1.1 2.3 2.2
17.7 12.7 12.7 10.6 8.2 7.5 6.4 5.2 4.9 3.7 3.5 1.9 2.1 1.6 1.2
15.7 11.6 11.1 10.7 9.4 6.6 7.8 7.4 4.8 3.8 2.5 1.6 3.1 2.7 1.0
Collating aggregate scores with subgroup scores to show correlation in crime seriousness tends to exaggerate the strength of relation because the subgroup scores are actually components of the aggregate scores and hence part of the correlation would be spurious. Alternatively, the correlation coefficients between two subgroup scores can be used to show the degree of agreement. This is certainly an improvement, but is still not satisfactory. A regression line for two subgroup scores is only a hypothetical construction of consensus, artificially built up to minimize the square deviation of the subgroup scores to the regression line. It would still exaggerate the strength of relation, though to a lesser extent than the previous method. To measure the agreement, a regression ˆ = X, or alternatively X ˆ = Y (i.e., model of the form Y complete agreement between two subgroup scores X and Y) could be used. The model assumes perfect agreement between two subgroup scores and hence the correlation of determination, r2, will show the proportion of agreement of Y to X or of X to Y; and the value of 1 r2 will represent the proportional deviation of subgroup scores away from perfect agreement. In Table 2, correlations between subgroup scores and aggregate scores indicate nearly perfect agreement in crime seriousness. People share virtually the same perception on crime seriousness, irrespective of
their background in gender, age, and education. As explained, the results are exaggerated. If correlations between subgroup scores are used instead (Table 3), the values of r2 are reduced unanimously, though in varying degrees. For the agreement between males and females, the value of r2 is reduced from .98 to .93. For education, the lowest correlation is .88, for the agreement between people with primary education and people with tertiary education. For people of different ages, although the reduction is less significant, it is still observable. When the models assuming perfect agreement are used, the consensus is seen to weaken further. For consensus between males and females, the r2 values of .92 and .89 (Table 3) indicate 8 percent (for model ˆ = X) and 11 percent (for model X ˆ = Y), respectively, Y of disparity from complete agreement in crime seriousness between men and women. For education, smaller values of r2 are also found. The difference in perceived seriousness of people with primary education and those with secondary education, for example, is enlarged to 6 percent. Finally, reduction in agreement about crime seriousness for people of different age groups is also found. It may be concluded that the strength of agreement in crime seriousness has been overestimated in previous studies and that the use of a more appropriate model will weaken the strength of relation.
Table 2 Coefficient of determination, r2, of linear regression model on the relation between the seriousness scores for a subgroup and the overall population Gender
Overall population
Educational level
Age
Male
Female
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
18 – 30
31 – 45
46 +
.98
.98
.95
.99
.97
.98
.99
.93
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Table 3 Coefficient of determination, r2, of different regression models on the relation between seriousness scores for different subgroups
Using linear regression model Using model ˆ =X Y Using model ˆ =Y X
Gender
Educational level
Male and female
Primary and secondary
Primary and tertiary
Secondary and tertiary
18 – 30 and 31 – 45
18 – 30 and 46 +
31 – 45 and 46 +
.93
.98
.88
.95
.96
.93
.94
.92
.95
.87
.92
.96
.89
.88
.89
.94
.87
.94
.95
.92
.94
From the r2 values of perfect agreement model, it can be seen that age is the most important factor leading to larger disparities in perceived crime seriousness, while educational level is the least important. The overall agreement may conceal some big differences in specific crimes. To understand how the overall agreement is made up, the seriousness scores of the fifteen components of crimes need to be studied. When the scores of the fifteen crimes for males and females are compared, large discrepancies of 2.4, 2.6, 1.8, and 2.6 are found for serious crimes, ‘murder,’ ‘rape,’ ‘serious assault,’ and ‘bribery,’ respectively. This indicates that females place more emphasis on bodily harm than males. Males, on the other hand, pay more attention to crimes that are detrimental to the society as a whole. For example, males rate ‘bribery’ as more serious than females do. If the crimes were ranked according to their seriousness scores, this point becomes even more obvious. Examining the rank order of crime seriousness, it is interesting to find that in the eyes of males, ‘drug offense’ is even more serious than ‘rape,’ a judgment with which females do not agree. Comparing the seriousness scores for young people (eighteen to thirty) with those for old people (forty-six or above), one can find that there is good agreement about the evaluation of serious crimes like ‘murder’ and ‘rape.’ There are big differences, however, for the less serious crimes like ‘bribery,’ ‘unlawful society,’ ‘deception, fraud, and forgery,’ ‘snatching,’ and ‘possession of arms.’ Younger people place more emphasis on crimes like ‘bribery’ and ‘deception, fraud, and forgery,’ which violate directly the virtue of righteousness and honesty. Older people, on the other hand, give more seriousness ratings to crimes like ‘unlawful society,’ ‘snatching,’ and ‘possession of arms.’ In Hong Kong, organized crimes, which are associated with unlawful society, have been a more serious problem before 1970. Political unrests also broke out occasionally during these years. Hong Kong people aged forty-six or
Age
above certainly have more experience in this aspect. People with tertiary education also have different evaluation of crime seriousness when compared with people with primary education. The higher educated people put more seriousness concern on crimes like ‘blackmail,’ ‘bribery,’ ‘unlawful society,’ and ‘possession of arms.’ As educational level is positively related to wealth and social status, these emphases are understandable as ‘blackmail’ does harm to one’s wealth and ‘bribery’ has been realized as detrimental to the economy and political system in surrounding countries of Hong Kong, for example, Mainland China and some Southeast Asian countries. By contrast, the lower educated people put more emphasis on ‘drug offense,’ ‘burglary,’ ‘snatching,’ and ‘theft,’ which tend to have higher incidence rates in less affluent areas.
Sociodemographic seriousness differentials in paired comparisons of crimes The seriousness score of a crime is an overall indicator summarizing its relative seriousness as reflected by comparisons with the other fourteen crimes. As such, similarities in seriousness scores for two subgroups may have concealed some big differences in seriousness for some specific comparisons of crimes. For more detailed analysis of the agreement, and alternatively disagreement, about crime seriousness between two subgroups, the comparisons of a specific crime with the other fourteen crimes need to be examined. In the following, crimes with bigger subgroup disparities in perceived seriousness are to be focused and the seriousness scores are to be further elaborated into paired comparisons. Four crimes, namely, ‘murder,’ ‘rape,’ ‘serious assault,’ and ‘bribery’ were selected to study gender differences in perceived seriousness. From the column on ‘rape’ in Table 4, it can be found that 24
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Table 4 Proportion of men and women regarding crime i as more serious than crime j Crime j
Crime i Murder
Rape Indecent assault Murder Serious assault Robbery Blackmail Snatching Burglary Theft Deception fraud and forgery Drug offense Criminal damages Possession of arms Unlawful society Bribery
Rape
Men
Women
.82 .97
.76 * .96
1.00 .99 .94 1.00 .99 1.00 .96 .80 1.00 .98 .94 .92
1.00 .97 .95 1.00 .97 1.00 1.00 .80 1.00 .97 .90 .96
Men
Women
.96 .18 .91 .76 .77 1.00 .99 .99 .89 .57 .96 .86 .68 .75
.94 .24 * 1.00 * .84 * .78 1.00 .97 .97 .95 * .70 * .94 .92 * .69 .74
Serious assault
Bribery
Men
Women
Men
Women
.09 .65 .00
.00 * .64 .00
.29 .53 .92 .85 .93 .65 .11 .88 .80 .53 .26
.31 .65 * .95 .79 .95 .68 .15 .97 * .83 .62 * .30
.25 .86 .08 .74 .25 .35 .69 .68 .79 .58 .11 .72 .64 .32
.26 .85 .04 .70 .26 .30 .59 * .63 .67 * .41 * .11 .67 .44 * .11 *
* The proportions of men and of women are not equal at 5 percent level of significance.
On the whole, women have placed much less emphasis on ‘bribery.’ Significantly less women than men think that ‘bribery’ is more serious than ‘snatching’ or ‘theft.’ The gender differences are even larger on comparisons of ‘bribery’ with ‘deception, fraud, and forgery’ (a difference of 17 percent), ‘possession of arms’ (a difference of 20 percent), and ‘unlawful society’ (a difference of 21 percent). In contrast to ‘bribery,’ women place more emphasis on ‘serious assault’ than men do. A significantly larger propor-
percent of women regard ‘rape’ as more serious than ‘murder,’ while only 18 percent of men share this attitude. A smaller proportion of men think that ‘rape’ is more serious than ‘serious assault,’ ‘robbery,’ ‘drug offense,’ and ‘possession of arms.’ An overwhelming majority of the victims of this crime is female and this may be the underlying reason for the gender differences. For ‘murder,’ not much disparity in judgment can be found between men and women, except its comparison with ‘rape.’
Table 5 Proportion of respondents of different age groups (18 – 30, 46+) regarding crime i as more serious than crime j Crime j
Rape Indecent assault Murder Serious assault Robbery Blackmail Snatching Burglary Theft Deception fraud and forgery Drug offense Criminal damage Possession of arms Unlawful society Bribery
Crime i Possession of arms
Snatching
Unlawful society
Bribery
18 – 30
46 +
18 – 30
46 +
18 – 30
46 +
18 – 30
46 +
.05 .43 .00 .14 .10 .14 .29 .29 .33 .33 .00 .38
.37 * .68 * .05 * .32 * .11 .26 * .47 * .47 * .53 * .58 * .10 * .63 *
.00 .38 .00 .08 .00 .00
.00 .38 .00 .13 .06 * .19 *
.25 * .36
.43 * .81 * .45 * .00 * .50 .53 * .15 * .28 *
.35 * .70 * .00 * .50 * .45 * .60 * .85 * .75 * .80 * .65 .10 .60 .75 *
.40 .35
.27 .52 .14 .04 .48 .71 .30 .12
.25 .55 .10 .40 .20 .30 .70 .60 .60 .60 .10 .60 .60
.29 .82 .12 .88 .29 .53 .88 .88 .94 .71 .12 .76 .65 .35
.24 * .96 * .08 * .72 * .24 * .32 .72 * .68 * .84 * .64 .12 .72 .64 .32
.65
.68
* The proportions of respondents aged 18 – 30 and of respondents aged 46+ are not equal at 5 percent level of significance.
Y.K. Kwan et al. / Journal of Criminal Justice 30 (2002) 623–632
tion of women think that it is more serious than ‘blackmail,’ ‘criminal damage,’ and ‘unlawful society.’ To study age impact on perceived seriousness, four crimes were selected. They are ‘possession of arms,’ ‘snatching,’ ‘unlawful society,’ and ‘bribery.’ The results are summarized in Table 5. Very big differences are found between the judgement of younger people (eighteen to thirty) and older people (forty-six or above). It is interesting to find that 37 percent of older people think that ‘possession of arms’ is even more serious than ‘rape,’ while only 5 percent of younger people think so. Perhaps, older people have experienced the Second World War and social unrest during the 1950s and 1960s, so that the crime is associated with war and violence in their mind. Similar results are also obtained when ‘possession of arms’ is compared with the other crimes, with three exceptions. When compared with ‘robbery’ and ‘bribery,’ the older people and the younger people share similar opinions. When compared with ‘unlawful society,’ an even larger proportion of younger people (40 percent) than older people (25 percent) rate it as more serious. Again, this may be attributed to older people’s personal experiences in which organized crime has been a serious problem in Hong Kong in the 1950s and the 1960s, before the birth of the younger generations. Older people also place more seriousness in ‘snatching.’ Nineteen percent of them think that the crime is more serious than ‘blackmail,’ whereas not
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even one youngster has this judgement. More of the former group than the latter think that the crime is more serious than each of ‘burglary,’ ‘theft,’ and ‘deception, fraud, and forgery.’ During wars and social unrest, snatching would occur frequently and older people should have more personal experiences of the crime. It is natural that they would regard the crime as more serious than other age groups. When comparing ‘snatching’ with ‘unlawful society’ and ‘possession of arms,’ however, a smaller percentage of older people than younger people think that it is more serious. The seriousness scores of ‘unlawful society’ are higher for older people than for younger people. Relatively large differences are found for paired comparisons of the crime with ‘robbery,’ ‘blackmail,’ and ‘theft.’ For all these comparisons, the proportion of older people considering the crime as more serious has exceeded that of younger people by more than 20 percent. On the other hand, younger people place more seriousness than older people do on ‘bribery.’ A much larger percentage of younger people opine that ‘bribery’ is more serious than ‘blackmail,’ ‘burglary,’ and ‘serious assault.’ Before the setting up of the Independent Commission for Anti-Corruption by the Hong Kong government in the 1970s, corruption and bribery had been widespread, so much so that the crime might be ‘accepted’ by the population as a normal practice in getting things done. This may be the reason for older people placing less emphasis on the crime. Nonetheless, an exception could be
Table 6 Proportion of respondents with different educational levels (primary, tertiary) regarding crime i as more serious than crime j Crime j
Crime i Bribery
Rape Indecent assault Murder Serious assault Robbery Blackmail Snatching Burglary Theft Deception fraud and forgery Drug offense Criminal damage Possession of arms Unlawful society Bribery
Snatching
Burglary
Blackmail
Primary
Tertiary
Primary
Tertiary
Primary
.21 .84 .05 .63 .26 .26 .53 .42 .58 .58 .11 .63 .58 .26
.22 .87 .13 * .78 * .17 * .35 * .87 * .83 * .96 * .65 .13 .83 * .78 * .30
.00 .47 .00 .20 .00 .07
.00 .24 * .00 .05 * .05 * .05
.06 .41 .00 .24 .00 .12 .59
Tertiary .00 * .41 .04 * .15 * .04 * .04 * .44 *
.41 .85 .41 .00 .54 .91 .23 .47
.56 * .68 * .28 * .00 .50 .58 * .17 .13 *
.85 .65 .07 .54 .91 .38 .58
1.00 * .36 * .00 * .64 * .58 * .25 * .17 *
Primary
Tertiary
.19 .50 .06 .31 .13
.25 .92 * .08 .71 * .33 *
.93 .88 .92 .82 .36 .85 1.00 .54 .74
.95 .96 * .96 .80 .47 * .77 * .77 * .46 .65 *
* The proportions of respondents with primary education and of respondents with tertiary education are not equal at 5 percent level of significance.
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found: whereas 82 percent of younger people think that ‘bribery’ is more serious than ‘indecent assault,’ a larger percentage, 96 percent, of older people think so. Four crimes, ‘bribery,’ ‘snatching,’ burglary,’ and ‘blackmail’ were selected to study the disparities in crime seriousness between people with primary education and with tertiary education (Table 6). Very big differences in their perceived seriousness can be found in pair-wise comparisons. For example, while 42 percent of people with primary education judge ‘bribery’ as more serious than ‘burglary,’ 83 percent of people with tertiary education think so. Large differences in perceived seriousness are observed for the paired comparisons of ‘bribery’ with ‘snatching,’ ‘theft,’ ‘criminal damage,’ and ‘possession of arms.’ It seems that the higher educated realizes more than the lower educated the detrimental effects of ‘bribery.’ The only exception is that a larger proportion of people with primary education than people with tertiary education think that ‘bribery’ is more serious than ‘robbery.’ It can be seen from Table 6 that the lower educated places more seriousness than the higher educated in ‘snatching’ and ‘burglary.’ As these two crimes are normally more widespread in some less wealthy regions of the city, and as education and income are positively related, these two crimes should be more of a worry for the lower educated than for the higher educated. Perhaps, this is the underlying reason for the educational differential in the seriousness scores. A much larger proportion of the lower educated people thinks that ‘snatching’ is more serious than ‘possession of arms,’ ‘indecent assault,’ and ‘serious assault.’ There is one exception: when compared with ‘burglary,’ a larger proportion of people with tertiary education than people with primary education think that ‘snatching’ is more serious. Comparing ‘burglary’ with the other crimes, very big differences are found for ‘bribery,’ ‘possession of arms,’ and ‘deception, fraud, and forgery.’ The only exception is ‘criminal damage’ on which the higher educated people have placed more seriousness than the lower educated. A much larger percentage of the higher educated than the lower educated think that ‘blackmail’ is more serious than ‘indecent assault’ and ‘serious assault.’ Furthermore, 33 percent of people with tertiary education as compared with 13 percent of people with primary education judge ‘blackmail’ as more serious than ‘robbery.’ Although the overall seriousness score of ‘blackmail’ is higher for higher educated people, a larger proportion of people with primary education have regarded ‘blackmail’ as more serious than ‘criminal damage,’ ‘possession of arms,’ ‘unlawful society,’ and ‘bribery.’
Discussion The findings of this study substantiated the sociologists’ hypothesis that crime seriousness is an evaluation mediated by the social structural context in which it is embedded. The evaluation reflects the respondents’ socioeconomic attributes. It was found that people with different age, gender, and educational level have different judgement about the seriousness of crimes. The reasons for the differences are not difficult to speculate: crimes are judged according to one’s personal interests and experiences, which in turn are related to such sociodemographic attributes like age, sex, and occupation. For example, women rate ‘rape’ as a more serious crime than men since women are more likely to be a victim of the crime. Older people regard ‘possession of arms’ as more serious than younger people because older people in Hong Kong have lived through social unrest and wars before 1970, which younger people have never experienced. People with tertiary education tend to regard ‘blackmail’ as more serious than people with primary education because they are economically better off and more likely to be a victim of the crime. These findings, however, are different from those of previous studies in which no substantial sociodemographic (age, sex, and education) differentials in perceived seriousness of crimes have been found (Warr, 1989; Wolfgang et al., 1985). In contrast to the findings in crime seriousness, previous studies on concern about crime found some substantial variation in crime concern according to socioeconomic and demographic factors. Carrying out a regional study in the United States, Lewis and Salem (1986) found that regions with social deprivation and higher crime rates tended to have higher scores on ‘fear of crime.’ Similar results have been found in the UK (Box, Hale, & Glen, 1988; Smith, 1983). Walker (1994) studied the impact of ethnicity on three aspects of concern, i.e., ‘fear,’ ‘worries,’ and ‘problems.’ Her results showed that there was a strong relation between ethnic groups and the three aspects of concern, and that the three aspects were strongly correlated within each ethnic group. Since perceived crime seriousness is another aspect of people’s attitudes towards crime, it is expected that perceived crime seriousness would also be affected by socioeconomic and demographic factors. Moreover, Warr and Stafford (1983) showed that the degree to which different crimes were feared was a multiplicative function of the perceived risk of offenses (i.e., the subjective probability they will occur) and the perceived seriousness of offenses. Hence, fear of crime and its perceived seriousness are closely related. As substantial socioeconomic and demographic differentials in fear of crime have been
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set up, it is reasonable to expect that there are also differentials in perceived crime seriousness, as the present study found. The reason for there being no substantial sociodemographic differentials in crime seriousness in previous studies may be a methodological one. The method of magnitude estimation has been used to measure perceived seriousness of crimes (Wolfgang et al., 1985). From a set of crimes, one is selected as a standard. The respondent is first asked to assign the standard a value. He/she is then instructed to assign to the remaining crimes values relative to the standard. The method is used because when a respondent is asked to rate the seriousness of a set of crimes on a scale of, say, eleven points (zero to ten), the respondent may think that all the crimes are serious and the scores will then lie within a narrow range. Hence, the results will not be discriminating. Warr (1989) used another technique to overcome this difficulty. In his study, respondents were first asked to rate the seriousness of two offenses ranging from petty crimes (trespassing and petty vandalism) to very serious crimes (multiple homicide), so that the respondents could gain some idea about the range of the seriousness of crime. Theoretically, the method of magnitude estimation can widen the range of seriousness scores and improve the discriminating power of the results, but practically, the method is not easy to implement. The method requires that respondents have a common understanding of the task they have been asked to perform and that considerable efforts need to be made in training respondents to meet the assumptions of magnitude estimation. There was evidence the requirement had not been achieved when the method was applied in Wolfgang’s study (Parton et al., 1991). Paired comparisons were used in this study. Two crimes were presented to a respondent at a time, and he was asked to make judgment about which was the more serious. The method was simple and did not require any training for the respondents. When the seriousness scores of Warr’s study were compared with those of the present study, a big difference in dispersion between the two sets of scores was found. The scores of the thirty-one crimes in the former study had a minimum of 3.10 and a maximum of 9.86. The mean score was 7.01 and the standard deviation was 1.81. The scores of the fifteen crimes in this study had a minimum of 1.11 and a maximum of 16.68. The mean score was 6.67 and the standard deviation was 4.55. As a result, the seriousness scores for the present study had a much wider range. It also had a much larger coefficient of variation (68.2 percent) than Warr’s study (25.8 percent). It can be concluded that in measuring crime seriousness, the Thurstone method using paired comparisons is a
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more responsive method that can give more discriminating results. The Thurstone scaling method is therefore recommended for future research in measuring crime severity. The causal mechanisms that guide public perceptions and evaluations of crime is an important topic of social psychology of crime. Wrongfulness (i.e., immorality of the act) and harm done to the victim have been suggested as the two main underlying dimensions for seriousness judgment. When crimes are perceived to be more harmful than wrong, harmfulness predominates in the serious judgment, and vice versa. In fact, crimes may be perceived along other dimensions like violence-involved, propertyrelated, sex-related, and the degree being personal. The way respondents arrive at crime severity judgment is an important topic in social psychology and certainly needs more future research. Nevertheless, crime severity is still very important: it is a simple indicator of the relative importance of crimes, subjectively perceived by the citizens. In this aspect, it cannot be substituted by ‘wrongfulness,’ ‘harmfulness,’ or by other attitudes towards crimes like ‘fear,’ ‘worry,’ and ‘problem.’ In so far as seriousness judgments being the chief determinants of public beliefs concerning appropriate penalties for crimes, a strong normative consensus of crime would support the social agreement of the appropriate penalties for crimes. This study showed that consensus of crime seriousness was exaggerated in previous studies. When a more appropriate method was used to measure agreement, consensus of crime seriousness was weakened to a certain extent. Despite these, normative consensus of crime seriousness could still be maintained. Using the model of perfect agreement, the smallest coefficient of determination still had a value of .87, indicating only a small (13 percent) deviation from perfect agreement, and most of the values of coefficient of determination were still .92 or above. While normative consensus of crime seriousness supports equal penalty for all, sociodemographic differentials in crime seriousness, on the other hand, indicate that different subgroups of a society tend to have different evaluations on crime seriousness, and hence different views on the appropriateness of legal penalty of crime. If differentials are strong, there would be conflicting evaluation on the appropriateness of legal penalty. As a result, there are two types of discrepancy between perceived crime seriousness and legal penalty. One refers to the deviation of the legal penalty from that implied by the aggregate seriousness score of a crime, and this has been an important topic in the seriousness-of-crime studies. Another belongs to the discrepancies of legal penalty from those measured by the serious scores of differ-
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ent subgroups. Crime severity differentials, in fact, indicate not only the divergent feelings of different subgroups of a society towards the appropriateness of legal penalty of crime, but also the different feelings about the intensity of crime in the society. If differentials are strong, different types of crime index with different sets of weights will be needed. Although the disparity in crime seriousness found in this study did not justify an urgent need in constructing different types of crime index, it nevertheless drew attention to such a need. As crime seriousness is socially determined, regular surveys may be needed if changes in evaluation are to be detected and documented.
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