ABSTRACT
A crucial principal of the law is that the punishment should fit the crime. If the public in general considers that punishments are too lenient or too harsh then they lose faith in the judicial system, which can undermine the rule of law. Determining what punishment a convicted offender should get draws on a view of how serious the crime is. Consequently, considerations of the seriousness of different crimes, and how that relates to outcomes in court, are an important area of research.
The study of how serious people think any given crime is, and what the appropriate consequence should be through the sentence given for it, lends itself to the research method I have called a ‘survey’. The proposed study therefore consists of obtaining ratings by people of the seriousness of various types of crime. These views can be related to the sentence that any given type of crime typically attracts, using a fairly straightforward analysis. However, the basis on which people decide how serious a crime is, and the criteria that influence the sentencing decision, are rather more complex than might appear at first sight.
