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Public Perceptions of Crime Seriousness: A Comparison of Social Divisions in Israel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Sergio Herzog
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Abstract

Crime seriousness research indicates that respondents from varying social and cultural groups rank the perceived seriousness of offenses similarly, with violent offenses as the most serious, followed by property, economic, and victimless offenses. It has also consistently been found, however, that the specific ratings of offenses by respondents from different social groups often differ. Because Israel is considered a deeply divided society, this article focuses on the comparison of public perceptions of the seriousness of varied criminal offenses between respondents belonging to varying central social groups in the countiy. As expected, the findings show similar, albeit not identical, rankings of offenses and important differences in the rating of specific offenses across groups. These findings are interpreted in the context of the Israeli society.

Type
Research Article
Information
Israel Law Review , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , Spring 2006 , pp. 57 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2006

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Footnotes

*

Senior lecturer at the Institute of Criminology, the Faculty of Law, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem—interests lie in the areas of criminology, criminal justice systems and social pyschology.

References

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20 For the purpose of this study, victimless offenses were defined in a broad way, in order to juxtapose them with victim crimes, in which there are specific victims suffering direct harm. Therefore, victimless offenses included false tax declaration, drug selling, bribery, illegal sexual relations with a minor, and illegal abortions.

21 See, e.g., Levi & Jones, supra note 4; Sellin & Wolfgang, supra note 5.

22 The most recent Israeli telephone directories (2000) provided the sampling framework, and a systematic random sampling method was applied. According to formal data of the Ministry of Communications, 98 percent of households in Israel have telephones, although among certain groups of the population (e.g., Arabs) this percentage is a little lower (around 95 percent). Based on these data, the percentage of people not listed in the directories is fairly low. In order to obtain a representation of minority social groups in the country, Arabic and Russian-speaking interviewers were employed in cases of Arab and new immigrant respondents.

23 Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel (2005) [hereinafter CBS] available at http://wwwl.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnatonenew.htm (last visited 2-2-06).

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27 CBS, supra note 23.

28 In the context of discriminatory reference to Arabs by Jewish institutions, cultural and religious contexts need to be taken into account. However, these questions were not addressed, in the current study.

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