Common Law Sentencing of Mentally Impaired Offenders in Australian Courts: A Call for Coherence and Consistency

Edgely, Michelle

doi:10.1080/13218710802242037

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Judicial inconsistency is a serious threat to the authority of the legal system and has attracted the attention of many researchers in the legal field. Most of them focus on the importance of consistency, causes of inconsistency, solutions, etc., from a case-by-case or theoretical perspective [Anderlini et al, 2014, Edgely, 2009, Li, 2014, Reamer, 2005. Meanwhile, many efforts have been devoted to developing fairness-aware machine learning algorithms [Berk et al, 2018, Dwork et al, 2012, Speicher et al, 2018, Zafar et al, 2017, which focus on designing models to produce fair outcomes rather than analyzing the unfairness in existing data or legal systems.…”

Section: Legal Judgment Consistencymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Anderlini et al [2020] use a mathematical approach to analyze and compare judicial consistency under different legal systems in theory. And other approaches focus on analysing real-world data from a case-by-case perspective [Anderlini et al, 2014, Edgely, 2009, Li, 2014, Reamer, 2005. However, few works focus on macro-consistency analysis towards real-world data, which will be important complementarity and support to qualitative research.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Equality before the Law: Legal Judgment Consistency Analysis for Fairness

Wang,

Xiao,

et al. 2021

Preprint

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In a legal system, judgment consistency is regarded as one of the most important manifestations of fairness. However, due to the complexity of factual elements that impact sentencing in real-world scenarios, few works have been done on quantitatively measuring judgment consistency towards real-world data. In this paper, we propose an evaluation metric for judgment inconsistency, Legal Inconsistency Coefficient (LInCo), which aims to evaluate inconsistency between data groups divided by specific features (e.g., gender, region, race). We propose to simulate judges from different groups with legal judgment prediction (LJP) models and measure the judicial inconsistency with the disagreement of the judgment results given by LJP models trained on different groups. Experimental results on the synthetic data verify the effectiveness of LInCo. We further employ LInCo to explore the inconsistency in real cases and come to the following observations: (1) Both regional and gender inconsistency exist in the legal system, but gender inconsistency is much less than regional inconsistency; (2) The level of regional inconsistency varies little across different time periods; (3) In general, judicial inconsistency is negatively correlated with the severity of the criminal charges. Besides, we use LInCo to evaluate the performance of several de-bias methods, such as adversarial learning, and find that these mechanisms can effectively help LJP models to avoid suffering from data bias.

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Section: Legal Judgment Consistencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equality before the Law: Legal Judgment Consistency Analysis for Fairness

Wang,

Xiao,

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…For instance, lack of remorse is ubiquitously viewed in the legal literature as an aggravating factor requiring punishment and, therefore, a longer sentence (Tudor, 2008). In contrast, mental disorder is commonly seen as a mitigating factor necessitating treatment and leniency in sentencing (Edgely, 2009;Ross & Lawrence, 2005). Interestingly, drug and alcohol addiction can be seen as either an aggravating or mitigating factor, depending on certain case-specific issues (Bagaric & Edney, 2015).…”

Section: Sentencing Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judicial sentencing considerations in cases of violent offenders versus sexual offenders

Butrus¹

2018

Psychiatry, Psychology and Law

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The overall aim of this study is to explore the judicial sentencing considerations in South Australian criminal cases of violent offenders versus sexual offenders in order to identify aggravating and mitigating factors. A total of 37 cases involving violent offenders (n D 25) and sexual offenders (n D 12) were downloaded from the Courts Administration Authority of South Australia website and subjected to a retrospective content analysis of the text contained in the published judicial sentencing remarks. The results reveal that offender-and offence-related aggravating factors are more salient judicial sentencing considerations in the cases of the violent offenders, whereas victim-related aggravating factors are more salient judicial considerations in the cases of the sexual offenders. Certain mitigating factors that were seen as salient considerations in the cases of the violent offenders-resulting in reduced culpability and a lighter sentence-appear to have had little impact in the cases of the sexual offenders. The implications of the findings for legal practice, social policy and future research are discussed.

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“…Whether, and to what extent, the philosophical aims in sentencing adults and children differ in practice is unclear. In the traditional court system, research has suggested that rehabilitation is given the least emphasis of all the sentencing objectives, where ‘treatment-based sanctions are perceived to be lenient and imposing them is a sign of weakness’ (Edgely, 2009). Correctional rehabilitation tends to prioritise security, reductions in recidivism and risk management, in contrast to traditional mental health and drug rehabilitation service delivery where the focus is on recovery and support (Denton, 2014; Hall, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Themes in sentencing young adults charged with serious violent crime involving alcohol and other drugs

Lawler

Barrett

Stapinski

et al. 2020

Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology

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The majority of young people in custody have alcohol and other drug problems and over 90% report past-year experiences of high-risk drinking and illicit drug use. Despite a strong link between drug use and violent offending, there is a dearth of information about how this relationship plays out in sentencing young adult offenders. This study examines themes in the sentencing of drug-using young adults facing court for serious violent crime and describes how judges discuss rehabilitation as a consideration for this high-risk group. This research contributes to the literature by bridging law and social science through a cross sectional analysis of n = 507 sentencing remarks from New South Wales higher courts. Substance use involvement was indicated in more than three-quarters (77%) of violent offence cases. Among young adults sentenced for violent crimes involving substance use (n = 51) robbery and homicide were the most common offences, and alcohol and methamphetamine were the most frequently involved substances. Two themes emerged around judges’ reasons for sentencing, one emphasising offender agency and choice and another more compassionate position acknowledging the influence of drug dependence on offending behaviour. Despite this divide, addressing substance use dependence was commonly seen as key for the successful rehabilitation of young people who commit violent crime involving alcohol and other drugs.

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Common Law Sentencing of Mentally Impaired Offenders in Australian Courts: A Call for Coherence and Consistency

Cited by 6 publications

References 2 publications

Equality before the Law: Legal Judgment Consistency Analysis for Fairness

Equality before the Law: Legal Judgment Consistency Analysis for Fairness

Judicial sentencing considerations in cases of violent offenders versus sexual offenders

Themes in sentencing young adults charged with serious violent crime involving alcohol and other drugs

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