WHAT IS THE PERCEIVED SERIOUSNESS OF CRIMES? MARK WARR University of Texas at Austin 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 norma- tive 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 harm fur, seriousness mirrors wrongfulness. Where crimes are perceived to be more harm fur than wrong, harmfulness predominates. A substantial minority of respondents, however, did not perceive diflerences in the moral gravity of crimes,judging the seriousness of crimes solely on the basis of harmful- ness. These and other findings indicate that seriousness judgments are more structured and complex than commonly supposed and that conven- tional measures of seriousness, when applied to substantive problems, may mask or obscure distinct mechanisms of evaluation. Social judgments concerning the seriousness of criminal offenses have been a subject of continuous study in criminology since the publication of the landmark work The Measurement of Delinquency (Sellin and Wolfgang, 1964). Research on the subject has grown to include cross-cultural compari- sons of seriousness ratings as well as a substantial literature on social consen- sus among Americans on the perceived seriousness of crimes (e.g., Normandeau, 1966; Rossi et al., 1974). The recent publication of the National Survey of Crime Severity, a sample survey in which 60,000 Ameri- cans rated the seriousness of crimes, attests to a continuing interest in this issue (Wolfgang et al., 1985). Although the seriousness literature has been largely methodological, the substantive importance of seriousness is well understood to students of devi- ance. If judgments about the seriousness of crimes are construed as norma- tive evaluations of acts, for example, then collective judgments about the * This research was supported by a grant from the University Research Institute of the University of Texas at Austin. I thank my colleagues Sheldon Ekland-Olson, Tom Pullum, Norval Glenn, and Lester Kurtz for their comments on this paper, and Judy Warr and Lisa Marquis for their research assistance. CRIMINOLOGY VOLUME 27 NUMBER 4 1989 795
Transcript
WHAT IS THE PERCEIVED SERIOUSNESS OF CRIMES?
MARK WARR University of Texas at Austin
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 norma- tive 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 harm fur, seriousness mirrors wrongfulness. Where crimes are perceived to be more harm fur than wrong, harmfulness predominates. A substantial minority of respondents, however, did not perceive diflerences in the moral gravity of crimes, judging the seriousness of crimes solely on the basis of harmful- ness. These and other findings indicate that seriousness judgments are more structured and complex than commonly supposed and that conven- tional measures of seriousness, when applied to substantive problems, may mask or obscure distinct mechanisms of evaluation.
Social judgments concerning the seriousness of criminal offenses have been a subject of continuous study in criminology since the publication of the landmark work The Measurement of Delinquency (Sellin and Wolfgang, 1964). Research on the subject has grown to include cross-cultural compari- sons of seriousness ratings as well as a substantial literature on social consen- sus among Americans on the perceived seriousness of crimes (e.g., Normandeau, 1966; Rossi et al., 1974). The recent publication of the National Survey of Crime Severity, a sample survey in which 60,000 Ameri- cans rated the seriousness of crimes, attests to a continuing interest in this issue (Wolfgang et al., 1985).
Although the seriousness literature has been largely methodological, the substantive importance of seriousness is well understood to students of devi- ance. If judgments about the seriousness of crimes are construed as norma- tive evaluations of acts, for example, then collective judgments about the
* This research was supported by a grant from the University Research Institute of the University of Texas at Austin. I thank my colleagues Sheldon Ekland-Olson, Tom Pullum, Norval Glenn, and Lester Kurtz for their comments on this paper, and Judy Warr and Lisa Marquis for their research assistance.
CRIMINOLOGY VOLUME 27 NUMBER 4 1989 795
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seriousness of crimes bear directly on a fundamental aspect of human cul- tures, that is, social norms. Indeed, the seriousness literature is perhaps the single largest body of evidence on social evaluations of human conduct. In addition to their value as cultural indicators, judgments of the seriousness of crimes are central to the social psychology of crime and punishment. Seri- ousness judgments affect the degree to which different crimes are feared (Warr and Stafford, 1983) and are the chief determinants of public beliefs concerning appropriate penalties for crimes (cf. Blumstein and Cohen, 1980; Hamilton and Rytina, 1980). Other evidence indicates that individuals rely on the seriousness of crimes in estimating such things as the certainty of pun- ishment and the relative frequencies of different crimes (e.g., Erickson et al., 1977; Warr, 1980). The seriousness of a crime also affects legal reactions to that crime, from the probability that it will be reported to the police (e.g., Skogan, 1984) to the sentence that will be meted out. The resurrection of determinate sentencing in the United States during the past decade has meant that defendants in many states are today sentenced solely on the basis of two criteria: the number of prior offenses and the seriousness (as judged by public officials) of the immediate offense (US. Department of Justice, 1978).
Given the central place of seriousness in the criminological literature of the past two decades, it might be expected that criminologists agree on the mean- ing of the term seriousness. It might also be supposed that criminologists have marshaled clear evidence as to what members of the general public have in mind when they respond to questions about the seriousness of crimes. Unfortunately, neither of these expectations have been fulfilled, and a largely informal debate over the meaning of seriousness has simmered for some time (Rossi and Henry, 1981).
The heart of the issue lies in the fact that the notion of seriousness can have more than one meaning. Consider, for example, the following offense: shop- lifting $4 worth of goods from a large retail store. There are two central ways in which the seriousness of this act might be judged. First, one might con- sider the moral gravity of committing the act, that is, the moral culpability or blameworthiness that would accrue to an individual committing the act. Such a judgment is clearly a normative evaluation of the act and, hence, this dimension will be referred to here as the perceived wrongfulness of criminal offenses. On the other hand, the action might be judged on the basis of the harm or damage that the action brings upon the victim. Here, the judgment is not a normative evaluation of the act at all, but rather a factual assessment of the consequences of the offense for the victim. Since the judgement in this instance is based on an assessment of consequences, we will refer to this type of judgement as the perceived harmfulness of offenses.
The distinction between harmfulness and wrongfulness has been over- looked in the seriousness literature, but it appears in fields as varied as juris- prudence, developmental psychology, ethics, and social psychology. In the
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Moral Judgement of the Child, for example, Piaget (1932) reports that, as they grow older, children come to distinguish between the harmfulness of an act (or its “material consequences,” to use Piaget’s term) and its moral wrongness (“naughtiness”). That is, an action (e.g., lying) may be morally wrong even when it causes no harm, and an action that results in substantial harm (e.g., injury to a sibling) may be morally blameless, when, for example, it occurs by accident or is committed under duress or in self-defense. Similar reasoning is found throughout Western criminal law in such doctrines or con- cepts as mens rea, strict liability, negligence, and defenses to crime. In sociol- ogy, Durkheim (1949) was among the first to point out that acts (e.g., violating food taboos, burning the flag, working on the Sabbath) may be devi- ant even when they are devoid of objective harm (see also Gibbs, 1966).
In no field, however, are questions of wrongfulness and harmfulness more critical than in ethics, where the distinction between actions and their conse- quences underlies centuries of moral philosophy. According to utilitarian and other consequentialist theories, the test of right and wrong actions rests entirely on their consequences; an action is morally right if it brings about good consequences. Under Kantian and other deontological systems, how- ever, an act is morally right if it is consistent with or deducible from a moral rule. A good act may have bad consequences (and vice versa), but it is the nature of the act, not its consequences, that defines its moral character (e.g., Taylor, 1975).
When it comes to social judgments of the seriousness of crimes, the distinc- tion between wrongfulness and harmfulness would appear to be critical. The reason is that many crimes are likely to be evaluated quite differently on the two dimensions. Returning to the example above, one might expect that many individuals would perceive the loss of $4 as a trivial consequence to a retail store but would perceive the act of theft as much less trivial on moral grounds. If individuals were asked to rate the seriousness of this or any other crime, would they respond using the harmfulness of the act, its wrongfulness, or some weighting of the two? Or would they see no difference between the two dimensions?
If it is unclear how individuals arrive at judgments of the seriousness of crimes, it is also true that criminologists hold divergent opinions as to the meaning of seriousness? Virtually all studies of the seriousness of crimes have relied on survey questions that employ the word “seriousness” itself in the wording of the question. But investigators appear to disagree as to what such questions actually measure. For example, Rossi et al. (1974) entitled their well-known study of Baltimore residents “The Seriousness of Crimes: Nor- mative Structure and Individual Differences,” implying a normative interpre- tation of seriousness. On the other hand, Wolfgang et al. (1985) clearly equate seriousness with harm or damage to the victim, since the words “seri- ousness’’ and “harm” are at times used interchangeably.
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This study examines how seriousness judgments are formed, concentrating on the contributions of harmfulness and wrongfulness to seriousness judg- ments. The analysis will show that there is considerably more structure and complexity to seriousness judgments than commonly supposed and that indi- viduals differ in how they determine seriousness.
DATA AND METHODS
The data for this study were obtained through a mail survey of Dallas resi- dents. A Texas city was chosen so as to benefit from the reputation of the University of Texas in the state, and Dallas appears to be the Standard Met- ropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) in Texas that most closely resembles SMSA's in the United States as a whole. The composition of the Dallas SMSA with regard to education, marital status, sex, age, and ethnicity is close to that of all SMSAs (Bureau of the Census, 1986). The median income of Dallas residents is somewhat higher than the national figure, but that is unlikely to have any bearing on the results.
The survey was designed in accordance with Dillman's (1978) methods for mail surveys. Respondents were chosen randomly from the Dallas telephone directory. One week after the initial mailing, all respondents received a reminder postcard. A letter and replacement questionnaire were mailed to nonrespondents three weeks after the initial mailing. Dillman recommends yet a third follow-up to nonrespondents after seven weeks, but it was omitted because it was thought to be intrusive and because the marginal returns would be small.
The survey was conducted in September 1987, about seven months after the printing of the phone directory. Because phone directories grow increas- ingly incorrect with time, a large initial sample size (n = 865) was chosen to offset the anticipated sample attrition. This proved fortuitous, since one unanticipated source of attrition soon appeared-many of the persons listed in the Dallas directory lived outside the postal limits of Dallas. This had no effect on the representativeness of the sample, merely limiting it to the city of Dallas itself (the original intent), but it did reduce sample size. Of the esti- mated 665 persons who were sent the questionnaire, 353 returned it, a 53% response rate. Of the 353 questionnaires, 336, or 95%, were usable. A com- parison of the sample with 1980 census data indicates that the sample is quite similar to the population of Dallas in age, sex, and marital status, but not race. Whereas 17% of the sample was black or Hispanic, 24% of the Dallas SMSA and 38% of the city of Dallas is black or Hispanic. Hence, the find- ings are largely confined to whites.
To determine the sources of seriousness judgments, respondents were first asked to rate the seriousness of a set of offenses ranging from petty crimes (e.g., trespassing and petty vandalism) to multiple homicide. In subsequent
PERCEIVED SERIOUSNESS OF CRIMES 799
questions, respondents were asked to rate the same offenses according to (1) how morally wrong they are, and (2) the degree to which they harm or damage the victim.
The seriousness question, which used wording similar to that of Rossi et al. (1974), follows:
There are many different kinds of crime. Some are considered to be very serious, others not so serious. Below is a list of different types of crime. We are interested in your opinion about how serious each type of crime is. If you think it is among the least serious, then circle the number 0 beside the crime. If you think it is among the most serious, then circle the number 10 beside the crime. If you think the crime falls somewhere between the least serious and the most serious, then circle the number between 0 and 10 that best indicates how serious you think the crime is. Remember that the seriousness of a crime is only a matter of opinion, and it is your opinion that we want.
The question was followed by a list of 3 1 offenses with an 1 1-point (0-10) scale printed beside each offense. The words “least serious” were printed above the number 0 and “most serious” appeared above the number 10.
Following the seriousness question were the two questions measuring wrongfulness and harmfulness, respectively:
For each crime below, please indicate how morally wrong you think it is for a person to commit the crime. If you think it is not morally wrong at all, then circle the number 0 beside the crime. If you think committing the crime is very morally wrong, then circle the number 10 beside the crime. If your judgment is somewhere in between, then circle the number between 0 and 10 that best describes how morally wrong you think it is to commit the crime.
Finally, we would like to know how much you think each of the follow- ing crimes harms or damages the victim. If you think that the crime is not harmful or damaging to the victim at all, then circle the number 0 beside the crime. If you think the crime is very harmful or damaging to the victim, then circle the number 10 beside the crime. If your judgment is somewhere in between, then circle the number between 0 and 10 that best shows how harmful or damaging you think the crime is to the victim.
The list of 3 1 offenses appeared under each question, with 1 1-point scales printed beside each offense. The words “not morally wrong at all” and “very morally wrong” were printed above 0 and 10, respectively, in the wrongful- ness question, and the words “not harmful at all” and “very harmful” were placed in the same location in the harmfulness question.
The 31 offenses included personal, property, and public order offenses and
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were selected from a larger pretested pool of offenses so as to cover the full range of seriousness but avoid duplication (i.e., offenses with approximately identical seriousness scores). Most of the offense descriptions are taken or paraphrased from Wolfgang et al. (1985) or Rossi et al. (1974). The first two offenses on the list were chosen from the extreme high and low ends of the scale (according to pretest data); they were placed at the beginning in order to give respondents an immediate sense of the range of the scale and thereby maximize discrimination among offenses.
FINDINGS
An initial inspection of the response structure to the three questions revealed that respondents fell into two clearly discernible groups based on responses to the wrongfulness question. Unlike either the seriousness ques- tion or the harmfulness question, a substantial minority (26%) of respondents rated all or nearly all of the offenses as equal when it came to moral gravity, usually assigning the number 10 to all offenses. These respondents occasion- ally accompanied their answers with statements to the effect that all crimes are equally wrong morally, indicating a principled disagreement with the proposition that crimes vary in their moral gravity. Because they constitute a distinctive group, these respondents are henceforth referred to as “nondis- criminators,” meaning that they perceive no difference in the moral gravity of criminal offenses. In the analysis that follows, nondiscriminators are opera- tionally defined as. respondents who assigned a score of 10 to more than 25 of the 31 offenses.’ The remaining respondents are referred to as “discriminators.”
DISCRIMINATORS
Table 1 presents the mean perceived seriousness, harmfulness, and wrong- fulness of the 3 1 offenses among the discriminators. Before considering how discriminators arrive at seriousness judgments, let us first consider a logically prior question: Do individuals distinguish between the wrongfulness and harmfulness of crimes, and if so, how are the two dimensions related?
1. Nearly all of the nondiscriminators assigned a score of 10 to each of the offenses. In a few instances, however, respondents assigned scores of 8 or 9 to as many as five of the offenses, but rated all other offenses as a 10. Since they appear to perceive virtually no variation in the wrongfulness of crimes, those respondents have been included among the nondiscriminators. Regardless of the group to which they belonged, respondents were excluded from the analysis if they failed to rate all of the offenses on all three questions, which yielded n’s of 197 and 7 1 for discriminators and nondiscriminators, respectively.
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TABLE 1. Mean Perceived Seriousness, Harmfulness, and Wrongfulness of 31 Offenses Among Discriminators
Mean Mean Mean Serious- Harmful- Wrongful-
ness ness ness Dev. ~~
Offense Description 1 2 3 4 5 6
7
8
9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16
17
18 19 20
21 22
23
24
25 26 27 28 29
30
31
~
Robbing a store and killing two employees Stealing a bicycle from a driveway Shoplifting a pair of socks from a store Robbing a person of $400 on the street Polluting a river used for drinking water Breaking into a house and stealing a TV set A teenager hitting an old woman in the street A father sexually abusing his teenage daughter Stealing an unlocked car Evading $500 in federal income taxes Killing a pedestrian while speeding Writing a bad check for $10 to a store Secretly stealing $15 from a close friend A repair shop overcharging $60 on auto repairs A parent beating hidher child with fists Setting fire to an occupied apartment building Ten high school boys beating up a classmate Robbing a person of $4 on the street Illegally receiving monthly welfare checks A man running his hands over a woman on a bus Snatching a handbag containing $15 A man hitting his wife during an argument A store marking “large” eggs as “extralarge” Disturbing the neighborhood with noisy behavior Writing a bad check for $350 to a store Trespassing in a railroad yard Picking someone’s pocket of $20 A teenager forcing his girlfriend into sex Breaking into a parking meter and stealing $2 Painting obscenities on a highway billboard Shoplifting merchandise worth $600 from a store
We can think of crimes as falling into one of three categories: (1) crimes that are more harmful than they are wrong, (2) crimes that are more wrong than they are harmful, and (3) crimes for which harmfulness and wrongful- ness are equally balanced. How are crimes to be placed in these categories? A straightforward method is to plot a set of crimes on two-dimensional coor- dinates with wrongfulness on one axis and harmfulness on the other axis, and to calculate the regression line linking the two dimensions. The regression line can then be viewed as a demarcation between two zones. Crimes that fall above the regression line enter into the first category (more wrong than harm- ful), crimes that fall below the regression line enter the second (more harmful than wrong), and crimes that fall on or near the line enter the third category.
Figure 1 shows such a plot using the data on wrongfulness and harmfulness from Table 1. The plot reveals that there is a generally monotonic relation between the two dimensions, and a good deal of common variance (r2 = .85). The plot also displays the fitted regression line, which is given as equation (1) in Table 1. A close inspection of the plot shows that the crimes are not evenly distributed about the regression line, but rather wind about the line, forming clusters above or below the regression line as they progress up the line.
The pattern displayed in Figure 1 raises an immediate question: Are there any similarities among the crimes in these clusters? Indeed, there are. Figure 2 is identical to Figure 1, except that the apparent clusters have been circled and arbitrarily labeled I-IV. The crimes that fall within each cluster are presented in Table 2, along with the deviation from the regression line for each crime. Also included in Table 2 is a fifth category for those offenses that fall on, or nearly on, the regression line itself.
Looking at the crimes in category I, all of the offenses are property offenses, where the victim suffers only monetary or property losses. Because the deviations for all of these offenses are positive, and the offenses are all of a type, we can reach a general proposition: As a class, property crimes are viewed as more wrong than harmful to the victim. Evidently, the harm incurred in property crimes is simply insufficient in the eyes of respondents to match the moral gravity of committing the crime. Turning to category 11, all of the offenses in this category are crimes against persons-robbery/homi- cide, sexual assault, and arson/homicide. These offenses are perceived to be much more harmful than the property offenses, but they are nonetheless viewed as slightly greater in moral gravity than in the harm they cause their victims.
The next two categories contain crimes that are perceived to be less wrong than harmful. Category I11 consists of three public order offenses, which as a
10 -
9 -
8 -
7 - W R 0 N
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Figure 1. Scatterplot of Wrongfulness by Harmfulness
6
Q
d 0 J' Q
Q @ / Q
Q @ /
2 3L Q
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
HARMFULNESS
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Figure 2. Scatterplot of Wrongfulness by Harmfulness, with Offenses
Grouped into Categories
1 0 -
9 -
8 -
7 - W R 0 N G
L N E S S
L 6 1
5 -
4 -
3 -
1
2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
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Table 2. Offenses Grouped According to Deviations from the Regression Line
Offense Description Deviation Category I
29 Breaking into a parking meter and stealing $2 3 Shoplifting a pair of socks from a store
10 Evading $500 in federal income taxes
.55
.65
.25
.35
.51
.83
.84
.37
.20
.46
.73
.37
.14
.45
.07
.05
.32
.21
.08
2 Stealing a bicycle from a driveway
27 Picking someone’s pocket of $20 18 Robbing a person of $4 on the street 19 Illegally receiving monthly welfare checks 25 Writing a bad check for $350 to a store 14 A repair shop overcharging $60 on auto repairs
13 Secretly stealing $15 from a close friend 31 Shoplifting merchandise worth $600 from a store
9 Stealing an unlocked car 6 Breaking into a house and stealing a T V set 4 Robbing a person of $400 on the street
21 Snatching a handbag containing $15
12 Writing a bad check for $10 to a store Category I1
1 Robbing a store and killing two employees 8 A father sexually abusing his teenage daughter
16 Setting fire to an occupied apartment building Category 111 26 Trespassing in a railroad yard 24 Disturbing the neighborhood with noisy behavior 30 Painting obscenities on a highway billboard
- 1.80 - 1.80 - .60
Category IV 22 A man hitting his wife during an argument 17 Ten high school boys beating up a classmate
-.38 - .58 - .33 - .26 - .23 - .93 -SO
- .04 .oo
28 A teenager forcing his girlfriend into sex
11 Killing a pedestrian while speeding
23 A store marking “large” eggs as “extra large” 20 A man running his hands over a woman on a bus
7 A teenager hitting an old woman in the street 15 A parent beating hidher child with fists
5 Polluting a river used for drinking water Category V
gruup, are perceived to be less harmful and less wrong than any of the other crimes. Two of these offenses4isturbing the neighborhood and trespassing in a railroad yard-exhibit the largest deviations of any of the offenses (- 1.80 in both cases) and are clearly perceived in largely utilitarian terms, meaning that they are viewed as much less morally wrong than simply harmful.
Category IV appears to be formed by two subgroups. The first consists of offenses against the person, but where the victim and offender have a prior
social relationship, specifically, that of wife, classmate, girlfriend, and child. Here the wrongfulness of the offense (but not its harmfulness) seems to be mitigated somewhat by the existence of a prior relationship. This finding is consistent with that of Rossi et al. (1974), whose respondents rated a “forci- ble rape of a woman in a park” 13th among all offenses, but rated “forcible rape of a neighbor” 2 1st and “forcible rape of a former spouse” 62nd. One of the offenses in this subgroup (a teenager hitting an old woman in the street) does not stipulate any relation between the actors, but judging by the other offenses that accompany it in the plot, it appears to have been viewed as a nonstranger encounter by most respondents. The second subgroup (killing a pedestrian while speeding, polluting a river used for drinking water) also con- sists of offenses against the person, but the distinguishing feature of these offenses seems to lie in the fact that criminal intent is either lacking or unclear, thereby reducing the wrongfulness of the acts. As in the other sub- group, these offenses are viewed as more harmful to the victim than morally wrong.
The final category, as noted above, consists of offenses that are approxi- mately “balanced” on harmfulness and wrongfulness. Any criterion for plac- ing offenses in this category is necessarily arbitrary, since distance from the regression line is a matter of degree rather than kind. In any event, included in this category are the two offenses that lie closest to the regression line (i.e., deviations of .OO and -.04). The first (a store marking “large” eggs as “extralarge”) is the only instance of false advertising among the offenses, and does not logically fall into any of the preceding categories. The second (a man running his hands over a woman on a bus) is, unfortunately, a rather ambiguous offense (ie., are the man and woman strangers or lovers?), and it was no doubt difficult for respondents to typify and evaluate. Interestingly enough, then, the two offenses that fall most squarely on the regression line appear to be logical outliers, in the sense that they do not clearly fit into the other categories, which encompass the bulk of the offenses.
In the foregoing analysis, deviations from a linear model have been used to identify groups of offenses that cluster together on the wrongfulness/harmful- ness plane. While a linear model is a useful device for this purpose, it should not be construed as the best-fitting or most parsimonious model for describing the data. Figure 3 shows that the data are nicely fit by a cubic polynomial function, a model that significantly improves on the simple linear model (R2 = .92 versus .85). Beyond describing the data more adequately, however, the polynomial model is important for another reason. An inspection of Figure 3 shows that the polynomial model, when overlaid with the linear model, reca- pitulates in broad form the categories of offenses identified above, thereby lending credence to the categorization. In addition, the model shows that the
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Figure 3. Scatterplot of Wrongfulness by Harmfulness, with Fitted
Polynomial Model and Linear Model
10 Q
9
8
7 W R 0 N G
L N E S S
L 6
5
4
3
2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 8 10
HARMFULNESS
808
wrongfulness/harmfulness relation is best viewed, not as a segmented or dis- jointed relation, but as a continuous function that is distended, so to speak, as it passes through offenses of different types.
JUDGING SERIOUSNESS
The preceding analysis showed that the offenses rated by respondents fall, for the most part, into clearly discernible categories. Indeed, the traditional distinctions among personal, property, and public order offenses recognized by criminologists appear to have cognitive significance to the general public as well, in that they inform judgments about both wrongfulness and harmful- ness and affect the position of crimes on the two dimensions. But regardless of how the offenses might be classified, it is clear that crimes are evaluated differently on the two dimensions. Accordingly, the next logical question is this: How are wrongfulness and harmfulness used by discriminators in judg- ing the seriousness of crimes?
Many possible decision mechanisms or processes could be used in judging the seriousness of crimes. Seriousness might be determined entirely by harmfulness, or by wrongfulness, meaning that individuals attend to a single, consistent criterion in evaluating seriousness. Seriousness could be a simple average of these two dimensions or some other, less obvious, weighting. Or perhaps respondents alternate between wrongfulness and harmfulness in judging seriousness, depending on which of the two attributes is, say, greater (or lesser) for any particular crime.
As a first step toward answering the question, a simple additive model incorporating both harmfulness and wrongfulness was fit to the data. Equa- tion (1) in Table 3 shows the fitted model. Observe that the coefficients for wrongfulness and harmfulness are both highly significant and that this simple additive model fits the data well. The most striking features of the model, however, are that the coefficients for wrongfulness and harmfulness are approximately equal, and both coefficients are quite close to .50. Accord- ingly, the model can be restated as follows: S = a + W/2 + H/2 or, identi- cally, S = a + (W + H)/2, where S = seriousness, W = wrongfulness, and H = harmfulness. As the latter equation shows more clearly, the additive model implies that seriousness judgments are a simple average of wrongful- ness and harmfulness. That is, these two attributes are given equal weight in judging seriousness; respondents choose as it were, the midpoint of the two variables.
The “average” model described by equation (1) depicts a simple, logical mechanism for evaluating seriousness. Further investigation, however, led to the conclusion that the average model is in fact an inappropriate model for these data, for several reasons. First, the average model does not operate consistently across all the crimes; randomly deleting offenses causes the
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Table 3. Models of Seriousness Among Discriminators Additive Model
Category I
Category IV
Primacy Model
(1) SER = - . 55 + .52*** WRONG + .47*** HARM
(2) SER = -4.43 + 1.36** WRONG + .07 HARM
(3) SER = -5.64 + .48 WRONG + 1.06* HARM
R2 = .958
R2 = .900
R2 = .934
(4) SER = .41 + .23 WRONG + .62** HARM - 4.73 PRIMARY** + 1.10** (WRONG X PRIMARY) - .53* (HARM X PRIMARY) R2 = .974
* p < .05 ** p < .01 *** P < .001
parameters of the model to fluctuate markedly. In addition, an inspection of the residuals of the model indicated that the expected values under the model systematically underestimate or overestimate the observed seriousness scores as one progresses up the seriousness scale. The strongest evidence against the model, however, arises when we fit an additive model within the categories of offenses identified earlier. Equations (2) and (3) in Table 3 show the additive model fit separately for categories I and IV, the two categories that are large enough to sustain a separate analysis. Equation (2) shows that, within cate- gory I (the property crimes), wrongfulness has a large and statistically signifi- cant effect on seriousness, and harmfulness has a small (nearly zero) and statistically insignificant effect. Within category IV, however, the reverse occurs. Harmfulness has a large and significant effect, equation (3), but the effect of wrongfulness is substantially smaller and statistically insignificant.
These results undermine the average model, but at the same time they point to a different mechanism for evaluating seriousness. Recall that the offenses in category I are perceived to be more wrong than harmful. As just seen, the perceived seriousness of these crimes is largely determined by their wrongfulness. The offenses in category IV, however, are perceived to be more harmful than wrong, and their perceived seriousness is largely a function of their harmfulness. Consequently, it appears that in judging seriousness, respondents do not use both harmfulness and wrongfulness. Instead, they choose one criterion or the other, depending on which of the two is greater or predominant for any particular crime. Put another way, it is the principal or primary feature of a crime that appears to determine its seriousness. To dis- tinguish it from the average model, this decision mechanism is referred to as the “primacy model.”
Testing the primacy model for the entire set of crimes requires a measure of the relative balance or dominance of the two dimensions for each crime. To
8 10 WARR
accomplish this, a dummy variable (henceforth PRIMARY) was constructed. Specifically, those offenses in categories I and I1 (more wrong than harmful) were assigned a score of 1 on this variable, and offenses in categories I11 and IV (more harmful than wrong) were assigned a score of 0. To allow the effects of wrongfulness and harmfulness to vary according to this variable, the interactions between PRIMARY and both wrongfulness and harmfulness were computed.*
The fitted model obtained through this procedure is given as equation (4) in Table 3. Each of the interaction terms is significant, and the model fits the data well. If the primacy model is operating as expected, then the effects of wrongfulness and harmfulness should be largely or entirely contingent on the value of PRIMARY. A careful look at the equation shows this to be true. When harmfulness predominates over wrongfulness (PRIMARY = 0), the coefficient for harmfulness (.62) is strong and statistically significant. When, however, wrongfulness is predominant (PRIMARY = l), the effect of harmfulness is almost entirely cancelled out (.62 - .53 = .09). The reverse process operates for wrongfulness; the coefficient for this variable is small (.23) and not significant when PRIMARY = 0, but it increases greatly (.23 + 1.10 = 1.33) when PRIMARY = 1.
The primacy model, then, appears to capture correctly the cognitive pro- cess used by discriminators in judging the seriousness of crimes. Rather than combining wrongfulness and harmfulness in some manner, these respondents appear to attend to the dominant feature of the crime-either its wrongful- ness or harmfulness-in judging seriousness.
NONDISCRIMINATORS
We turn now to the nondiscriminators, that is, those respondents who do not grade crimes according to their moral gravity. Table 4 shows the mean perceived seriousness and harmfulness of the 31 offenses among the nondis- criminators, as well as differences between discriminators and nondis- criminators in the perceived seriousness and harmfulness of the offenses. The perceived wrongfulness of the crimes is not shown, since it is a constant across crimes and, hence, cannot be correlated with other variables.
The first question is this: How do discriminators and nondiscriminators compare when it comes to the perceived seriousness of the offenses? Nondis- criminators display nearly identical variation in their judgments of serious- ness when compared with discriminators; the standard deviations of the seriousness ratings for the two groups are 1.81 and 1.97, respectively. In addition, the seriousness scores are very strongly correlated between the two
2. The two offenses in category V (i.e., the "balanced" offenses) were arbitrarily assigned a score of 0 on the dummy variable. The choice of scores for these two offenses, however, has no appreciable effect on the parameters of the model.
PERCEIVED SERIOUSNESS OF CRIMES 81 1
TABLE 4. Mean Perceived Seriousness and Harmfulness Among Nondiscriminators
- ~ _ _ _ Offense Description 1 Robbing a store and killing two employees 2 Stealing a bicycle from a driveway 3 Shoplifting a pair of socks from a store 4 Robbing a person of $400 on the street 5 Polluting a river used for drinking water 6 Breaking into a house and stealing a TV
set 7 A teenager hitting an old woman in the
street 8 A father sexually abusing his teenage
daughter 9 Stealing an unlocked car
10 Evading $500 in federal income taxes 11 Killing a pedestrian while speeding 12 Writing a bad check for $10 to a store 13 Secretly stealing $15 from a close friend 14 A repair shop overcharging $60 on auto
15 A parent beating hisher child with fists 16 Setting fire to an occupied apartment
repairs
b u i 1 ding 17 Ten high school boys beating up a
classmate 18 Robbing a person of $4 on the street 19 Illegally receiving monthly welfare checks 20 A man running his hands over a woman
21 Snatching a handbag containing $15 22 A man hitting his wife during an argument 23 A store marking “large” eggs as
24 Disturbing the neighborhood with noisy
25 Writing a bad check for $350 to a store 26 Trespassing in a railroad yard 27 Picking someone’s pocket of $20 28 A teenager forcing his girlfriend into sex 29 Breaking into a parking meter and stealing
30 Painting obscenities on a highway billboard 31 Shoplifting merchandise worth $600 from a
Figure 4. (Part 1) Scatterplot of Standard Deviations by Means for Seriousness,
Wrongfulness, and Harmfulness
4
3
S T A N D A R D
D 2 E V I A T I 0 N
1
0
Q Q
Q
0
2 3 4 5 0 7 a 9 10
MEAN H A R W U L N E S S
PERCEIVED SERIOUSNESS OF CRIMES 813
Figure 4. (Part 2) Scatterplot of Standard Deviations by Means for Seriousness,
Wrongfulness, and Harmfulness
PERCEIVED SERIOUSNESS OF CRIMES 813
Figure 4. (Part 2) Scatterplot of Standard Deviations by Means for Seriousness,
Wrongfulness, and Harmfulness
5 -
Q
Q
Q
2 - S
A
D R D '
D ' E . v I . A T * I 0 .
1 -
0 I . I ' I - I . I ' I ' I ' ~ ' r 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
MEAN WONGFULNESS
8 14 WARR
3-
2 - S 1 . A N . D A ' R 0 '
0 ' E . V I . A T ' I 0 -
1 -
0 -
Figure 4. (Part 3) Scatterplot of Standard Deviations by Means for Seriousness,
Wrongfulness, and Harmfulness
Q 0 Q 0
Q
I ~ I ~ I ~ I ~ I , I - I ~ ~
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
PERCEIVED SERIOUSNESS OF CRIMES 815
groups (r2 = .98). Yet, although there is strong relative agreement on seri- ousness between the two groups, they differ when it comes to absolute magni- tudes. Column 3 in Table 4 shows the differences in seriousness scores between nondiscriminators and discriminators. In the large majority of cases, nondiscriminators perceive the offenses to be more serious than discrimina- tors by a small, but statistically significant increment. If the seriousness scores of discriminators (Ds) are regressed on those of nondiscriminators (NDs), as in equation (1) of Table 4, there is a slope of nearly 1.0 (1.07), but a scale difference (intercept) of - 1.36. Simply put, then, nondiscriminators perceive offenses as more serious than do discriminators by a small but signifi- cant degree.
Nondiscriminators display as much variation in their seriousness judg- ments as discriminators, yet they do not perceive differences in the moral gravity of crimes. Hence, the crucial question is this: If nondiscriminators do not perceive diffe;ences in the wrongfulness of crimes, how do they judge the seriousness of crimes? A plausible answer is that they rely solely on the harmfulness of crimes in judging seriousness. The data are quite consistent with this proposition. Equation (2) in Table 4 shows the regression of sen- ousness on harmfulness. Observe that, among nondiscriminators, harmful- ness alone accounts for nearly as much variation in seriousness (9 = .94) as wrongfulness and harmfulness together do among discriminators (see Table 3). Put succinctly, then, these data suggest that among nondiscriminators, seriousness is harmfulness.
The fact that nondiscriminators rely solely on harmfulness in judging seri- ousness is instructive because it explains in part an earlier finding, that is, the greater perceived seriousness of offenses among nondiscriminators. Not only do nondiscriminators perceive the OVenses to be slightly more serious than do their counterparts, but they also perceive the offenses to be a bit more harm- ful. Column 4 in Table 4 displays the differences in the mean harmfulness of the offenses as judged by the two groups. In most instances, nondis- criminators perceive the offenses to be more harmful by a small but signifi- cant degree. The relation between seriousness and harmfulness, however, is virtually identical for both groups; the slope of seriousness on harmfulness is .80 in both cases, and the intercepts are quite close (1.28 for discriminators vs. 1.53 for nondiscriminators). Accordingly, the greater perceived harmful- ness of the offenses among nondiscriminators translates directly into greater perceived seriousness.
INDIVIDUAL VARIABILITY
Thus far, the discussion has concentrated on variation in perceived serious- ness from one crime to the next, using crimes as units of analysis. This emphasis on between-crime variability is appropriate because it speaks to the question: Why are some crimes perceived to be more (or less) serious than
816 WARR
others? At the same time, however, one may wish to know why and to what degree individuals differ in their evaluations of any one crime.
Figure 4 shows that individual variability in judgments of seriousness (as well as harmfulness and wrongfulness) is not constant from one crime to the next, but rather follows a consistent pattern. The plots in Figure 4 show the standard deviations of the offenses plotted against their respective mean scores on each dimension. In each case, individual variability in the ratings of crimes (measured by their standard deviations) tends to decline as we approach either extreme of the scale, producing a parabolic pattern. There are too few crimes on the lower extremes of the scales (the leftmost portions of the plots) to fully complete the parabolas, but the general pattern is reason- ably clear. The parabolic pattern obtained in each case may stem from the fact that the scales used to measure the dimensions are bounded at both ends, meaning there is less room for fine discriminations a t the extremes of the scales. On the other hand, it is not difficult to believe that the general public is in greatest agreement as to which crimes are least and most serious (or harmful or wrong).
The plots in Figure 4 indicate that, for a few crimes, seriousness, wrongful- ness, and harmfulness are quite nearly constant across individuals. For the remainder of the offenses, however, one may ask this question: To what extent does individual variability in the perceived seriousness of each offense reflect individual variation in the perceived wrongfulness and harmfulness for the crime? Table 5 reports the regression of seriousness on wrongfulness and harmfulness for each of the 3 1 crimes. The general pattern is quite clear; the coefficients for both wrongfulness and harmfulness are highly significant for 28 of the 31 offenses. The three exceptions are all offenses involving homi- cide, for which there is little individual variability. The evidence from Table 5, then, indicates that much of the individual variability in seriousness ratings is attributable to variation across individuals in the perceived harmfulness and wrongfulness of crimes. These two dimensions, therefore, are important in explaining differences in seriousness ratings, not only from one crime to the next, but also among individuals.
The last question to be addressed is whether the primacy model found to obtain among crimes holds for individuals as well. Observe, however, that the meaning of primacy (i.e., the balance between wrongfulness and harmful- ness) changes fundamentally as the units of analysis shift from crimes to indi- viduals. That is, the focus is no longer the balance between wrongfulness and harmfulness among crimes, but rather the balance from one individual to the next. Plotting the relation between wrongfulness and harmfulness among individuals for each crime revealed that in most instances the large majority of respondents were densely concentrated in either one zone or the other (i.e., more wrong than harmful, or more harmful than wrong), depending on the
PERCEIVED SERIOUSNESS OF CRIMES 817
TABLE 5 . Regression of Seriousness on Harmfulness (H) and Wrongfulness (W) for Each Offense
Regression Coefficient
~ - - H W R2
2 Stealing a bicycle from a driveway .20** .22** .16 3 Shoplifting a pair of socks from a store .38** .25** .28
5 Polluting a river used for drinking water .72** .28* .44 6 Breaking into a house and stealing a TV set .23** .30** .19 7 A teenager hitting an old woman in the street .32** .46** .33 8 A father sexually abusing his teenage daughter .36* .37* .13 9 Stealing an unlocked car .24** .47** .39
10 Evading $500 in federal income taxes .30** .42** .42 11 Killing a pedestrian while speeding .14 .43** .28 12 Writing a bad check for $10 to a store .33** .45** .41 13 Secretly stealing $15 from a close friend .31** .38** .30 14 A repair shop overcharging $60 on auto repairs .38** .42** .39 15 A parent beating hisher child with fists .60** .22* .35
17 Ten high school boys’beating up a classmate .23* .53** .40 18 Robbing a person of $4 on the street .26** .37** .28 19 Illegally receiving monthly welfare checks .32** .47** .52 20 A man running his hands over a woman on a bus .34** .34** .41
22 A man hitting his wife during an argument .41** .41** .45 23 A store marking “large” eggs as “extralarge” .56** .30** .54 24 Disturbing the neighborhood with noisy behavior .35** .35** .46
Offense Description 1 Robbing a store and killing two employees -.01 .21 .00
4 Robbing a person of $400 on the street .35** .20* .22
16 Setting fire to an occupied apartment building .a** .ll .22
21 Snatching a handbag containing $15 .33** .35** .35
25 Writing a bad check for $350 to a store .37** A** .40 26 Trespassing in a railroad yard .34** .47** .59 27 Picking someone’s pocket of $20 .32** .38** .40 28 A teenager forcing his girlfriend into sex .49** .54** .57 29 Breaking into a parking meter and stealing $2 .29** .42** .35 30 Painting obscenities on a highway billboard .36** .40** .45 31 Shoplifting merchandise worth $600 from a store .33** .47** .44 * p < .01 ** p < ,001
category in which the crime fell. Indeed, it is this very tendency for individu- als to concentrate in one region or the other that produces the winding or distended pattern of offenses on the wrongfulness/harmfulness plane seen in Figure 1. When the primacy model was tested for each of the 31 offenses, it improved on the simple additive model in only three instances, each of which was an offense in which the balance between wrongfulness and harmfulness did vary a good deal among individuals. So, although the balance between wrongfulness and harmfulness acts to distinguish one crime from the next and appears to be instrumental in comparing crimes, it does not generally
818
appear to be an important factor in explaining individual variability in seri- ousness ratings.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The findings of this study support several conclusions. Among those who discern differences in the moral gravity of offenses, wrongfulness and harmfulness are distinct dimensions, and conventional classes of crime (prop- erty, personal, public order) systematically differ on the two dimensions. The seriousness scores assigned to crimes by this group appear to reflect the domi- nant or primary feature of the crimes, either their wrongfulness or their harmfulness. Among those who do not perceive differences in the moral gravity of crimes, wrongfulness, being a constant, is unrelated to judgments of either harmfulness or seriousness, and harmfulness alone is used in assessing the seriousness of crimes. Although the seriousness judgments of this group display enormous relative agreement with those of discriminators, nondis- criminators perceive crimes to be slightly more serious and more harmful than do their counterparts.
A central question that emerges from the analysis is this: Who are the nondiscriminators? Apart from the manner in which they reckon serious- ness, how do they differ from discriminators? Analyses of the two groups did not disclose any conventional sociodemographic variables (e.g., age, sex, edu- cation) that reliably distinguish the two groups. Indeed, other investigators have not found any substantial variation in seriousness ratings according to such variables (e.g., Wolfgang et al., 1985). Still, some of the marginal com- ments of nondiscriminators are instructive:
Things are either morally wrong or not morally wrong. There are no
If it’s a crime, it’s immoral, period! Right is right and wrong is wrong. God says the wages of sin is death. There is no such thing as degrees of morality. It is wrong to commit a crime, period. Wrong is just wrong. To me, wrong and right have no shades or variations. In the sight of our Lord, all is sin. Right is right, wrong is wrong. All crime is very morally wrong. I think any crime is very morally wrong. If there are degrees, I’m not
I don’t believe there are shades of morally wrong.
shades of gray.
qualified to judge them.
Some of these respondents clearly display a religious basis for their convic- tion, and it may be that the other statements stem from a theologically grounded normative theory. The concepts of crime and sin are closely related, and the notion that moral wrongness is a matter of kind rather than
PERCEIVED SERIOUSNESS OF CRIMES 819
degree is a recurrent theme in protestant theology, having been one of the issues at stake in the Reformation.3 To the extent that religious values affect judgments about crime, it is precisely in the wrongfulness dimension of seri- ousness that such values could be expected to show their face. Had such findings been anticipated, measures of religious affiliation, participation, and beliefs could have been included in the study. As it stands, one can only speculate that the key difference between discriminators and nondis- criminators lies in religiously based moral theories.
A final, critical question is raised by the findings. Is seriousness a useful scientific concept, or does its use actually disguise or mask other, distinct cognitive processes? To illustrate, Warr and Stafford (1983) have shown that the degree to which different crimes are feared is a multiplicative function of the perceived risk of offenses (i.e., the subjective probability they will occur) and the perceived seriousness of offenses (as conventionally measured). In this context, it is plausible to suppose that the operative dimension of serious- ness is harmfulness, since the individual is presumably contemplating the consequences of a crime for himself or herself. On the other hand, several investigators (e.g., Blumstein and Cohen, 1980; Hamilton and Rytina, 1980) have shown that individuals rely on the perceived seriousness of crimes (again, as conventionally measured) in judging appropriate penalties for those crimes. Here, it is reasonable to suppose that the operative dimension of seri- ousness is wrongfulness, particularly if punitive judgments are construed as retributive in nature. If these suppositions are correct, then use of the notion of seriousness in these cases disguises what are in fact distinct mechanisms of evaluation. In the latter example, incidentally, the distinction between dis- criminators and nondiscriminators could prove to be crucial (assuming the argument is correct) in understanding how individuals assign penalties to crimes.
Then consider a related question. In response to the seriousness question, discriminators alternate between harmfulness and wrongfulness in evaluating the seriousness of crimes. But are there any natural situations in which this derived, or second-order, judgment is actually used, or is it limited to responding to seriousness questions? It is possible that, by using the term “seriousness” in survey questions, investigators during the past two decades have measured an attitude or perception that does not normally or naturally occur in the everyday thinking of individuals about crime? Or perhaps there are types of crime-related judgments in which individuals do indeed rely on a composite evaluation of seriousness.
These questions point to a need for a more careful consideration of the meaning and place of seriousness in the social psychology of crime. Some may dismiss this call for clarity on the grounds that the two dimensions of
3. See “sin” in Fern (1945).
820
seriousness are, after all, strongly correlated, and hence, practical applica- tions of seriousness ratings need not attend to such distinctions. But that is essentially an ascientific position because it overlooks the need to identify the true causal mechanisms that guide public perceptions and evaluations of crime-related phenomena.
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Mark Warr is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include the social psychology of crime and punishment, rape, and oppor- tunity theories of crime. He is currently preparing a report on public perceptions and reactions to violence for the National Research Council and is engaged in a research project on group delinquency.
