A comparison of sentencing decisions and their justification between professional judges and laypeople in Japan
A comparison of sentencing decisions and their justification between professional judges and laypeople in Japan
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日本专业法官与非专业人士的量刑决定及其正当性比较
DOI：
10.1007/s43545-022-00353-4
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发表时间：
2022
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Ioku Tomohiro
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Watamura Eiichiro;Wakebe Toshihiro;Ioku Tomohiro
很少有报道比较专业法官和非专业人员对同一刑事案件的量刑决定的实验性尝试。本研究考察了日本法官和非专业人员的量刑理由（惩罚、丧失行为能力、一般威慑和改造）和由此产生的监禁量刑差异。这项在线准实验包括48名法官和199名非专业人士。参与者阅读了一个虚构的谋杀案，他们被要求对两种正当性量表做出反应，并输入罪犯被监禁的年数。在数字输入量表中，法官和外行人都把惩罚放在了最重要的位置，这并没有察觉到两者的区别。李克特量表显示，与外行人相比，法官对康复、丧失行为能力或一般威慑的重视程度较低。正如预测的那样，法官选择的监禁年数明显短于非专业人士。辩护的不同会引起法官和非专业人士之间的分歧。该研究表明，法官对理由的考虑较少，量刑标准与外行不同。本文还讨论了与以往研究的不同之处，即法官对正当性的重视程度和量刑差异。
Few experimental attempts have been reported comparing the sentencing decisions of professional judges and that of laypeople using the same criminal case. This study examined the sentencing justifications (retribution, incapacitation, general deterrence, and rehabilitation) and the resulting imprisonment sentencing differences between Japanese judges and laypeople. The online quasi-experiment comprised 48 judges and 199 laypeople. Participants read a fictional murder case, and they were asked to respond on two types of justification scales and enter the number of years of imprisonment for the offender. Both the judges and laypeople placed the highest importance on retribution in the numerical input scale, which failed to detect the difference. The Likert scale revealed that judges add less weight to rehabilitation, incapacitation, or general deterrence, than laypeople. As predicted, the number of imprisonment years chosen by judges was significantly shorter than that of laypeople. The differences in justification can cause disagreements between judges and laypeople. This study suggests that judges do not give much consideration to justifications and decide on sentencing based on different criteria than laypeople. Differences from previous studies related to the judges’ emphasis on justification and the disparity of sentences are also discussed.