The Relationship Between Offense Characteristics of Burglary and Sentence

Abstract

The previous chapter was concerned with the development and description of the four dimensions (and their associated categories) used to describe burglary; namely, amount of violence, degree of organization, value of the theft, and number of counts of burglary. To classify a particular burglary in terms of this scheme, it was necessary to identify one category—the category whose defining content most closely matched the facts of the offense—for each of the four dimensions. At this point the case was described in terms of four codes, one for each of the dimensions, and each code being a score quantifying seriousness according to the degree of aggravation of the associated behavior. These descriptions of burglary were differentiated in terms of the type of premises: dwelling houses, commercial premises, and public buildings. Cases for which there were multiple counts were classified under the type of premises for the principal count.