Skip Navigation

This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (1)
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Francis, B.
Right arrow Articles by Dittrich, R.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

The British Journal of Criminology 41:726-737 (2001)
© 2001 Centre for Crime & Justice Studies (formerly ISTD)

A New Approach for Ranking ‘Serious’ Offences. The Use of Paired-Comparisons Methodology

Brian Francis, Keith Soothill and Regina Dittrich

The Centre for Applied Statistics, Lancaster University
The Department of Applied Social Science, Lancaster University
The Institute for Statistics, Economic University of Vienna

The non-consequentialist approach to punishment sentences on the basis of offence-seriousness. However, there has been little theoretical or empirical consideration of the notion of offence-seriousness. Identification of ‘serious’ offences tends to be commonsensical at best. Further, there is currently no systematic way of measuring changes of seriousness over time.

This study is a demonstration project displaying a way to investigate how the judiciary and the magistracy rank offence-seriousness in assessing actual cases. The use of paired-comparisons methodology provides a procedure which overcomes some problems of previous approaches. The method enables an assessment of the performance of judges and magistrates in terms of how they view the seriousness of offences without the artificiality of being involved in hypothesized field experiments.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.