Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

An Experimental Study of Sentencing by Magistrates

An Experimental Study of Sentencing by Magistrates A pilot study was carried out with 23 magistrates to develop a sentencing severity scale. An experiment was then conducted with 168 magistrates deciding sentences for simulated cases in 56 groups of three. The results showed that sentences were more severe when offenses were more serious, when offenders had a more serious criminal record, when offenders were male, and when offenders were of higher social status. The age of the offender, the race of the offender and victim, the plea, the prevalence of the offense, and whether breach of trust was involved, did not have significant effects on sentence severity. A comparison between real and simulated sentencing decisions showed that they were similar, and a comparison between individual and group decisions showed that the group decisions were more likely to be relatively severe than relatively lenient. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Law and Human Behavior American Psychological Association

An Experimental Study of Sentencing by Magistrates

Kapardis, Andreas; Farrington, David P.
Law and Human Behavior , Volume 5 (2-3): 15 – Jun 1, 1981
Download PDF
15 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/american-psychological-association/an-experimental-study-of-sentencing-by-magistrates-yP0DQ62Kef

References (15)

Publisher
American Psychological Association
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 American Psychological Association
ISSN
0147-7307
eISSN
1573-661X
DOI
10.1007/BF01044757
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

A pilot study was carried out with 23 magistrates to develop a sentencing severity scale. An experiment was then conducted with 168 magistrates deciding sentences for simulated cases in 56 groups of three. The results showed that sentences were more severe when offenses were more serious, when offenders had a more serious criminal record, when offenders were male, and when offenders were of higher social status. The age of the offender, the race of the offender and victim, the plea, the prevalence of the offense, and whether breach of trust was involved, did not have significant effects on sentence severity. A comparison between real and simulated sentencing decisions showed that they were similar, and a comparison between individual and group decisions showed that the group decisions were more likely to be relatively severe than relatively lenient.

Journal

Law and Human Behavior – American Psychological Association

Published: Jun 1, 1981

There are no references for this article.