Abstract
The present topic, of gauging criminal harm, is part of a larger subject that we have been mulling over for some time: the seriousness of crime. The question of how to assess crime-seriousness has been gaining importance in recent years, with the increasing influence of desert-oriented or 'proportionalist' conceptions of sentencing--conceptions which make the severity of punishment depend principally on the gravity of the offence of conviction.' Those conceptions have found their way into law in a number of jurisdictions. Several US states have adopted sentencing guidelines based in significant part on offence gravity.2 Finland and Sweden have enacted sentencing laws (Finland in 1976, Sweden in 1988) according to which punishments are to depend primarily on crimes' seriousness.3 These laws call upon judges to assess crimes' gravity (the 'penal value' of the offence, in the Swedish law's terminology) much more explicitly than before, and to develop legal
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