While it is impossible to predict how harmful a particular crime might be to various victims, crimes are categorized by their seriousness. Seriousness reflects the amount and the extent of the harm typically caused by such behaviour in three areas: personal harms, relational harms, and ethical and moral harms.

The amount of the harm increases for crimes that typically result in increased:

1. Numbers of victims,
2. Lengths of time during which victims are affected by the crime,
3. Degrees to which victims’ livelihoods or their quality of life are affected, and
4. Degrees to which the life of the community as a whole is affected.

The extent of the harm increases as the typical physical, material, and emotional harm to victims intensify. For example, the extent of harm is likely to be great if the crime causes high fear of physical harm. A crime in which a weapon is used is presumed to result in extensive harm.

The City Council of RJ City has reviewed the criminal code of its State, and assigned a level of seriousness to each offence in the code.

1. Category 1: Conduct proscribed by the criminal code but not enforced in RJ City. These represent codified values of the community and a frame of reference for parties and community members to use in resolving conflicts. Examples would include certain kinds of disturbing the peace offences or of altercations between neighbours.
2. Category 2: Crimes that are least serious,
3. Category 3: Crimes that are moderately serious, and
4. Category 4: Crimes that are most serious.

One purpose for establishing levels of seriousness is to provide for what might be called “procedural proportionality” in responding to crime. As a starting point, it is presumed that Category 4 offences (most serious) cannot be adequately addressed without the participation of community and government representatives in addition to the victim and offender. In other words, the victim and offender should not attempt to deal with those offences alone. A Category 3 offence (moderately serious) must have the victim, offender and a community representative participating, while government representatives may elect to not participate. Finally, the victim and offender may deal with Category 2 offences on their own, if community or government representatives choose not to participate.

Note:  All parties may participate in responses to any category of crime; level of seriousness is not used to exclude parties, but only to require increasing numbers of participants as seriousness increases.