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The sanctioning policy of a given society may be analysed on a number of levels. It may focus on the actions of the legislative body in the adoption of statutes, or on the legislative and administrative measures taken by the ministers and policy-makers who derive their formal powers from such statutes. Alternatively it may focus on the decisions of the courts, either by examining these on a statistical level or by analysing the content (the rhetoric as well as the substance) of their decisions. The present article will focus primarily upon the legislative policies of the Knesset in the matter of sanctions since the establishment of the state.Before beginning the analysis of legislative policy in this area, two preliminary observations may be made regarding the informal constraints influencing the formulation of legislative policy in relation to the penal system during the formative years of the state.

A nationwide replication study-the National Survey of Crime Severity-is currently being conducted by the University of Pennsylvania in conjunction with the U.S. Department of ustice. T. SELLIN & M. WOLFGANG, supra note 1, at app. D. 3 Id. at app. F. ' Here the emphasis was mainly on objective factors, such as the offender's possession of a weapon, but included also the use of verbal threats, which are more clearly indicative of a state of mind.

Quantification techniques in criminology have been applied extensively to the measurement of the seriousness of offenses, but the question of the relative severity of different penalities has been neglected. Which, for example, is the more severe penalty, a heavy fine, a long period of probation, or a short term of imprisonment? Is a $1,000 fine twice as severe a penalty as a $500 fine? This topic is not only of theoretical interest in itself It also has immediate practical implications for research on sentencing practices, on the seriousness of offenses, and on deterrence, as well as for the implementation of prevailing notions of proportionality in sentencing policy and for certain other jurisprudential problems.Attempts have occasionally been made to meet the requirements of research in this area by selecting an arbitrary measure of severity, such as imprisonment rates. Other researchers have assigned arbitrary weights to the various penalties. What is required, however, is the development of an empirically based scale, deriving from respondents' perceptions of the relative severity of various penalties. The methodology employed in measuring the seriousness of offenses may be adapted for this purpose.Tentative findings of an exploratory study are considered.In view of the proliferation of sophisticated techniques of quantification currently applied in criminological research, it is rather surprising to observe that in one vital area the development of such techniques seems to have been neglected. That is the problem of the severity of penalties meted out by the criminal courts.The question we are addressing is essentially the following: What is the relative severity of the various penalties commonly imposed by the courts? By way of illustration, we may ask whether a suspended sentence of three years' imprisonment, which may or may not be implemented at some future date, is a more or less severe penalty than a three-month sentence of peremptory imprisonment ? And how do these sentences compare with an order for probation supervision for a period of ten years-or a $10,000 fine? Most controversial of all: Does a sentence of life imprisonment approach the death penalty in terms of severity-or perhaps even surpass it?This type of question does not, of course, arise when considering two prison sentences of different lengths, or two fines of different amounts. Here, how-