Tai and Yiu (1994), the official statisticians,
urged the need for constructing a weighted crime index
in Hong Kong. This article records an attempt to
measure the perceived crime severity and to construct
a weighted crime index. In the study, crime typologies
were used. There were three reasons for the
choice. First, to construct a crime index, official statistics
on crimes must be an important source of data
and crime typologies are used in official statistics of
Hong Kong. Second, people may have different understandings
of crime typologies, as mentioned in the
previous paragraph, although it has been found that
there is a normative consensus about the seriousness
of crime typologies. Third, Hong Kong is densely
populated with efficient mass media communication.
It has been well known for having consensus in opinions
and actions about some issues in social, economic,
financial, and political spheres. The normative
consensus on crime seriousness should also be
found in Hong Kong. A survey was to be conducted
in Hong Kong to measure the relative seriousness of
fifteen crime typologies. The results would provide a
set of weights for the crimes and a time series of
weighted crime index (WCI) would be constructed
by applying the weights to the official statistics. The
inadequacies of the unweighted crime index (UNCI),
which is very often the only indicator of crime intensity
of a society, would then be seen when compared
with the WCI.