What makes a crime serious? Testing warr’s model of offence seriousness
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Date
2020
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ceza Hukuku ve Kriminoloji Dergisi
Access Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Abstract
Abstract: Warr (1989) proposed that the perceptions of seriousness of different criminal offences are a function of perceptions of harmfulness caused by a crime (consequences of the crime), and perceived wrongfulness of a crime (normative evaluations regarding the crime). The study reported in this paper tested this model and examined the perceptions of seriousness of different offences in a sample of university students in Turkey. It was found that the degree of consensus regarding offence seriousness was much higher for offences judged as more serious. It was further found, when using wrongfulness and harmfulness assessments, that offences clustered into three larger groups: offences that present threat/risk of physical harm/death, property offences, and “minor” offences. Further, Warr’s model was tested on both the offence and the individual level of analysis. The findings suggest that the model indeed holds, however relative strength of harmfulness and wrongfulness, as predictors of crime seriousness, are different in Turkey, compared to findings from the USA and Westernest European countries. On an individual level, it was found that harmfulness was a stronger predictor than wrongfulness in a much larger number of offences, and that on the level of the offence, harmfulness was as strong a predictor of seriousness as wrongfulness.
Description
Keywords
Crime seriousness, criminal victimization, norm violation, offences, violence perceptions
Journal or Series
Journal of Penal Law & Criminology/Zeitschrift für Strafrecht und Kriminologie
WoS Q Value
N/A
