The authors do not state that public perceptions of severity should be discounted, but merely that these should not be over-emphasized, as was the case in previous literature.
Another existing mode of measuring crime severity is that of economic models. Economic measures of costs may seem more objective, but given that they also involve speculative losses (such as lost productivity), they are not universally agreed upon. One widely-used model to estimate crime severity is the Bradley-Terry continuum which posits that stealing something less than $5 is less severe than stealing "something worth $5 -- $50, which itself is less severe than trying to steal something worth more than $50. Additionally, stealing or trying to steal a car is ranked more severe than the other theft items. Selling marijuana is also ranked less severe than selling harder drugs such as heroin, cocaine, or LSD" (Ramchand et al. 2009: 143). The authors of the article generally assume that this assumption is valid, although it could be argued that even this is a relatively arbitrary distinction and unfairly penalizes certain groups that may be more apt to engage in specific types of crimes (like car-jacking vs. white-collar crime, or selling crack vs. cocaine) more than other crimes. There are class and racial judgments in other words that are inevitably implied in severity rankings, regardless of the trends of the 'order' in which crimes take place. Even if respondents to the study in a wide variety of demographic and social categories accept such designations of severity, this is no less indicative of the degree to which prejudice about certain types of lifestyles and cultures have permeated the national consciousness.
The authors examined data from two sources to determine escalating levels of juvenile crimes severity. They used the National Youth Survey (NYS) and the RAND Adolescent Outcomes Project (AOP) to see which crimes were most common and also establish the progressive nature of severity. An example of one noteworthy trend was that "in the NYS sample the most frequently reported criminal behavior is throwing things at cars or people, which close to half of the sample reported doing at baseline. Less than 1% of NYS respondents reported using force to get money or things from a teacher in any wave" (Ramchand et al. 2009: 139). For most youths, prevalence for these crimes decrease over time (reflecting the common trend of 'aging out' of delinquency exhibited by most young people) "with the exception of selling marijuana, selling harder drugs, and car thefts" which indicates a further bifurcation into youths that commit crimes 'for fun' according to the author, and those who engage in crimes for profit and eventually come to embrace the criminal lifestyle (Ramchand et al. 2009: 142-143). There was a high probability, based on an analysis of the data that selling marijuana occurred before selling a burglary or hard drugs, giving support, according to the authors, and that these latter crimes deserved an even a higher rating on a 'severity' index than drug-related crimes than public perceptions might suggest (Ramchand et al. 2009: 144). In other words, many juveniles engaged in marijuana use or minor selling who never proceeded to commit more serious crimes, even though those who did commit more serious crimes did often engage in marijuana-related crimes first. Thus, contrary to the public perception, marijuana selling and use was not particularly severe nor did the majority of participants use marijuana use as a stepping stone to more severe crimes.
Analysis
The authors concluded regarding their analysis of life patterns that "the results suggest that this method provides estimates of offense severity that are not just face valid, but which also have a developmental interpretation that is specific to the population under study. The offense severity estimates across both samples tend to rank violent crimes as more severe than property and drug-related offenses. Interestingly, the estimates suggest that drug dealing offenses are not as severe as those reported in public perceptions surveys" based upon behavior patterns of users" (Ramchand et al. 2009: 147). While they believed the insights derived from their data analysis are important, the authors note certain limitations: "one must assume that opportunities to offend are ubiquitous throughout the entire duration of observation. If some crimes uniformly become more opportune later in the observation period, then they would automatically be ranked as more severe" (Ramchand et al. 2009: 147). Rather than inherent severity, simply by dwelling in certain areas, such as locations where it is easier to find certain kinds of drugs or where it is easier to steal (and sell stolen merchandise), this might cause a juvenile to engage...
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