What Is the Perceived Seriousness of Crimes?

Although criminologists have measured the perceived seriousness of offenses for decades, there is no consensus on the meaning of seriousness, nor is there clear evidence as to what individuals have in mind when they rate the seriousness of crimes. Seriousness judgments could reflect normative evaluations of offenses (i.e., their wrongfulness) or factual judgments about their harmfulness to victims. Survey data from Dallas residents show that the two dimensions are distinct and that conventional classes of crime (personal, property, public order) systematically differ on the two dimensions. Where crimes are perceived to be more wrong than harmful, seriousness mirrors wrongfulness. Where crimes are perceived to be more harmful than wrong, harmfulness predominates. A substantial minority of respondents, however, did not perceive differences in the moral gravity of crimes, judging the seriousness of crimes solely on the basis of harmfulness. These and other findings indicate that seriousness judgments are more structured and complex than commonly supposed and that conventional measures of seriousness, when applied to substantive problems, may mask or obscure distinct mechanisms of evaluation.