The Effects of Sanction Intensity on Criminal Conduct - JDAI Helpdesk

already predicted to be at low risk <strong>of</strong> serious re<strong>of</strong>fending. A successful model <strong>of</strong> low-risk
prediction should minimize the possibility that these <strong>of</strong>fenders pose a serious threat to
society by any measure. This section considers the various ways in which <strong>of</strong>fending
severity may be conceptualized, and how we operationalize some <strong>of</strong> these ideas as
outcome measures for the present study.
<strong>The</strong> assessment <strong>of</strong> <strong>of</strong>fending severity has been a long-standing concern <strong>of</strong>
criminological research.
Blumstein et al. (1986), for example, describe <strong>of</strong>fending
severity as a “key dimension <strong>of</strong> individual criminal careers” (p. 76) and note the crucial
policy interest in focusing on understanding and identifying serious <strong>of</strong>fenders. Despite
this interest, there remains little consensus on how best to measure severity.
<strong>The</strong>
conventional approach (Ramchand et al., 2009, p. 130) has been to weight different crime
types based on the perceptual method established by Sellin and Wolfgang (1978). Sellin
and Wolfgang asked panels <strong>of</strong> university students, juvenile court judges, and police
<strong>of</strong>ficers to rate the severity <strong>of</strong> a range <strong>of</strong> crimes compared to a trivial baseline <strong>of</strong>fense <strong>of</strong>
the theft <strong>of</strong> $1. Based on these ratings, they assigned a weight to each <strong>of</strong>fense relative to
the baseline. This type <strong>of</strong> crime severity rating appears to hold across different samples
and contexts (although some race-based differences have been noted), and remains
popular despite criticisms that no context is provided to panel participants, leaving them
free to speculate about unreported details <strong>of</strong> the <strong>of</strong>fenses (Ramchand et al., 2009).
<strong>The</strong> U.S. Federal Bureau <strong>of</strong> Investigation (FBI) also provides an <strong>of</strong>fense severity
classification that is used by police departments when they report crime data through the
Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. <strong>The</strong> classification <strong>of</strong> <strong>of</strong>fenses into Part I and
Part II <strong>of</strong>fenses was introduced in 1929 and now contains eight <strong>of</strong>fenses in the Part I
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