CITIZEN CRIME STEREOTYPES—NORMATIVE CONSENSUS REVISITED

This paper examines the extent of agreement about complex perceptions of crime—crime stereotypes. The literature addresses crime seriousness. Crime perception is a complex phenomenon including much more than judged seriousness. Crime stereotypes are shown to be coherently organized around a few basic perceptions such as level of violence, amount of property harm, level of sex relatedness, and perhaps a few others. While the data affirm that there is agreement about judged seriousness, it suggests significant disagreement regarding crime stereotypes. Different people adopt different crime stereotypes. These differences are related to social variables. The most important theoretical conclusion is that agreement about any single crime perception, including seriousness, does not imply agreement about other features.