Gauging Public Opinion on Sentencing: Can Asking Jurors Help (original) (raw)
Related papers
Criminology & Criminal Justice, 2017
In recent times, parliaments have introduced legislation directing judges to take defined purposes into account when sentencing. At the same time, judges and politicians also acknowledge that sentencing should vindicate the values of the community. This article compares the views on the purposes of sentencing of three major participants in the criminal justice system: legislators who pass sentencing statutes, judges who impose and justify sentences and jurors who represent the community. A total of 987 Australian jurors in the Victorian Jury Sentencing Study (2013–2015) were asked to sentence the offender in their trial and to choose the purpose that best justified the sentence. The judges’ sentencing remarks were coded and the results were compared with the jurors’ surveys. The research shows that, in this jurisdiction, the views of the judges, the jurors and the legislators are not always well aligned. Judges relied on general deterrence much more than jurors and jurors selected i...
Criminology & Criminal Justice, 2020
A plea of guilty is a long-accepted factor mitigating sentence in many countries, including Australia, although academic debate over the merits and application of the discount is ongoing. This paper presents findings from a national Australian study on public opinion on the guilty plea sentencing discount, with a particular focus on sexual offences. Survey data were drawn from 989 jurors in cases that resulted in a guilty verdict and 450 unempanelled jurors and 306 online respondents who were provided with vignettes based on real cases. A third of the respondents would have supported a discount in their case if the offender had pleaded guilty. In contrast, more than one half of the respondents surveyed, who had received a vignette with a guilty plea scenario, supported an increment in sentence if the offender had gone to trial. There was more support for a discount in cases involving non-sexual violent offences versus sexual offences and adult versus child victims. Where a discount ...
1994
Abstract A questionnaire was constructed to investigate theories of criminality, pre-trial juror bias and attitudes towards punishment amongst three groups: police officers, a sample of the general public and a group of offenders. It was anticipated that police would be prosecutor biased, advocate harsher sentences for criminal acts and be inclined to view crime as a deviation from a socially acceptable norm—a 'consensus' view.
Measuring Public Opinion about Sentencing
In July 2006 the Sentencing Advisory Council released a research paper entitled Myths and Misconceptions: Public Opinion versus Public Judgment about Sentencing (Gelb, 2006). The paper represented the culmination of a year-long project that was designed to examine and critically evaluate the current state of knowledge about public opinion on sentencing, as well as the methodological issues surrounding how public opinion is measured. The research paper suggested that there is a significant need to understand the nature of informed public opinion – public judgment – about sentencing. To achieve this, the paper concluded that (Gelb, 2006, p. 40): We need a combination of large-scale representative surveys with well-considered questions (using both the more simple question and the more complex crime vignette) combined with the qualitative aspects of the deliberative focus group that can provide a richness of detail on specific issues. By triangulating our methodology, we should be able ...
What the public thinks about sentencing
Extract: There is a relatively long tradition by legal scholars of gauging public perceptions about sentencing in Canada, the UK and the USA, along with limited research in Australia. This research is significant because 'the importance of public attitudes to sentencing lies in their potential to influence the development of policy guiding the criminal justice system'. Public confidence is essential for the effective functioning of justice. While it is the case that politicians and legislators make the laws, and judges and other justice agents (eg, police and prosecutors) apply them, the public has a role to play in guiding the types of punishments meted out. Thus, measuring public opinion is necessary because it is both a reflection of, and a potential influence over, sentencing practices.