Seriousness Weights in an Index of Crime

Abstract

The national of crime published annually by the FBI is one of the most commonly used social indicators. Many authors have criticized the FBI's index, an unweighted sum of the reported index for failing to account for the differing seriousness of the heterogeneous crimes in the index. Sellin and Wolfgang (1962) provide a procedure for developing crime-seriousness weights. An intense public debate has raged over which of these is correct. This paper compares the FBI and the SellinWolfgang indexes for reported crimes in the U.S. over the 1960-72 period, and finds that the two have been almost perfectly linearly related. Thus, the Sellin-Wolfgang index, even though conceptually correct and of value for other purposes, contributes no significant information to a national crime index. Other crime indexes are explored, and conclusions generalized for other social indicators.