Location and sentencing: to what extent do contextual factors explain between court disparities?

This article investigates the presence of unwarranted between court disparities in England and Wales, examining whether they can be explained by non-legal contextual factors such as the organisation of the court and socio-economic composition of the area. In contrast with previous literature, we emp...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Pina-Sánchez, Jose (Author)
Contributors: Grech, Diana C. (Other)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2018
In: The British journal of criminology
Year: 2018, Volume: 58, Issue: 3, Pages: 529-549
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
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Keywords:
Sentencing
Multi-level modelling
Census
Between-court disparities
Strafzumessung
Mehrebenenanalyse
Strafungleichheit
Description
Summary:This article investigates the presence of unwarranted between court disparities in England and Wales, examining whether they can be explained by non-legal contextual factors such as the organisation of the court and socio-economic composition of the area. In contrast with previous literature, we emphasise the importance of controlling for a wide range of legally relevant case characteristics. The findings reveal that some preliminary startling trends, such as more severe sentencing in courts located in neighbourhoods with high proportions of Muslim residents, are in fact accounted for by differences in the cases reviewed across courts. These findings call into question the validity of previous studies exploring the influence of the context on sentencing that did not adequately control for legal factors.
ISSN:1464-3529
DOI:10.1093/bjc/azx033