Using the framework of the Minnesota Guidelines model as a guide, specific California Penal Code violations were placed on an ordinal scale according to their severity, and ranked in consideration of the following factors.²¹ First, only felony offenses were placed onto the severity scale, since inclusion of misdemeanor offenses would inflate the score of a repeat offender (Roberts 1997). Secondly, the scale distinguishes between �serious" and �non -serious� offenses as defined in California law under Penal Codes �1192.7(c), �1192.8 and �667.5(c) respectively. Within each of these two classification groups, the offenses were ranked according to the prescriptive sentence and relative harm to others. Offenses that had similar penalties were distinguished from one another on the severity scale if one posed a greater threat of harm than the other.²² Wobbler offenses are included on the scale because they are only eligible for a third strike as felonies. A copy of the scale with representative offenses can be found in Table 4.

It should be noted that the seriousness of the crimes are represented ordinally but not in a perfect ratio order. Ideally, the scale would assign numbers to criminal offenses that would have exact ratio properties (Rossi and Henry 1980), but because the scale is anchored according to the penalties prescribed the legislature (which are themselves not presented in perfect ratio order), it follows that the scale in this study will have the same limitation.²³ It is unlikely that any other scale would be able to present this information in perfect ratio order either, since a ranking of crime seriousness requires an element of subjectivity (Roberts 1997).

Early reports from other counties indicated that only a small fractions of offenders (20%) were accused of a violent current offense with the majority of cases involved petty theft or drug abuse charges (Colvin 1994). Additional statistics indicate that up to 85% of three-strike offenders are convicted for non-violent instant offenses (Davis, Estes, and Shiraldi 1996). A look at the offense seriousness within this dataset of three-strike cases reveals that 30% of the defendants had been convicted of �wobbler� offenses as their most severe current offense, and only 22% of three-strike defendants committed a current offense that would qualify as a serious or violent felony-the standard that qualifies previous felonies as �strikes�(see Table 5). Furthermore, over 60% of three-strike defendants committed the equivalent to residential burglary as their most serious strike offense, with only a few offenders scoring high upon the severity scale (see Table 6).

²¹The information for the Minnesota Sentencing Guideline grid was taken from (Miethe and Moore 1989); modifications were made in part with reference to (Barry and Green 1981).
²²For example, the state legislature has specified a determinate sentence range of 2-4-6 years for simple robbery and 3-5-7 years for armed robbery. Although the sentence for armed robbery is not much higher than that of simple robbery, it does represent a greater potential harm to the victim, and thus is categorized one step higher on the severity scale.
²³For example, a �serious� felony offense is given more weight by the legislature because it counts as a strike, yet the penalty may actually be less than a non-serious offense.

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