Processes of repression, criminalization and penalization were importantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Mobilizing data produced through an ethnographic study of plea courts in Ottawa, this article reports on the ways in which lower criminal courts administered what judges described as “COVID justice.” In this transitory form of justice, we observed a) a dilated reward system for guilty pleas; b) the work of the virtual resolution team, a workgroup dedicated to unburdening the courts from backlogs attributed to the pandemic; c) requests to increase the credits granted for time served in locked-down, noxious prisons, and; d) the diversion of sentenced individuals from prison on the grounds of the primacy of public health over criminal justice.

Prevailing wisdom suggests that sentencing guidelines may constrain judicial discretion and hinder individualised justice; however, our cross-jurisdictional analysis indicates that they might actually better protect these principles than unrestricted discretion. Utilising two large-scale datasets from England and Wales, and Hong Kong, we examine sentences for burglary, assault, and drug trafficking. The results reveal a paradox: guidelines in England and Wales contributed to greater consistency in retributive proportionality and enhanced consideration of personal mitigating factors. Conversely, Hong Kong’s discretionary approach resulted in inconsistent application of sentencing considerations and personal mitigating factors. Both systems prioritised procedural efficiency, with guilty pleas markedly reducing sentences across various offences. These findings challenge the ‘bias effect’ critique by demonstrating that well-structured guidelines can safeguard individualised justice better than unfettered discretion can. The study offers robust empirical evidence for institutional design in criminal justice systems.

When it was first introduced, the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) had two primary goals of reducing the reliance on custody and increasing uniformity in sentencing practices. Twenty years later, the YCJA has succeeded in dramatically lowering overall rates of youth in custody, but this gain has been selectively experienced by non-Indigenous youth and regional disparities in sentencing practices persist. In this paper, we suggest that the YCJA’s inability to meet its goals is due to overcriminalization by over depth. Using Indigenous youth sentencing as a case study, we argue the YCJA’s layered and sometimes conflicting principles have symptoms of overcriminalization by over depth, including over- and under-inclusiveness, arbitrariness, and confusion in implementation. To more effectively meet the YCJA’s initial goals, we propose legislative streamlining and systemic reforms, including specialized Indigenous youth courts and enhanced community-based resources, as pathways to greater justice.

Despite large-scale racial inequalities across multiple social domains, racial innocence highlights the complacency of the law and social science research in denying racial power through race neutral assumptions. We explore three theoretical and methodological mechanisms maintaining racial innocence within quantitative social science: treating unequal structural conditions and organizational practices as impartial, isolating samples to reflect limited stages, and focusing on individual levels of analysis. Given that mass incarceration is one of the most visible modern-day exemplars of racial subordination in the United States, we use the example of incarceration sentencing to highlight these mechanisms. Using case processing data from Miami-Dade County between 2012 and 2015 (N = 86,340), we first examine racial inequality in incarceration sentencing when treating unequal case characteristics impartially across racial groups relative to when we allow case characteristics to be unequal across racial groups. Second, we examine racial inequality when isolating limited samples with narrow decision points relative to when we draw from samples across multiple stages. Finally, we examine racial inequality with individual-level frameworks relative to a neighborhood level frameworks. In this case, racial inequalities in incarceration sentencing with a racially consciousness approach are twice as large than with a racially innocent one.

This article provides a summary of the first comprehensive overview of Japanese youth justice, locating it within wider conceptual considerations of youth justice before outlining its historical development and questioning its uniqueness. It discusses the contested notion of pre-delinquency, its net widening potential, and its place in the wider trends in Japanese youth crime. The study critically assesses the overall organization, administration, and impact of the Family Court (equivalent to youth or juvenile courts) and summarizes recent developments in youth crime policy. The Family Court is the fulcrum of youth justice, but involves many social welfare elements. Despite the increasingly punitive rhetoric, policy, and legislation for juveniles in Japan, there is no evidence that more juvenile offenders are being committed to the adult courts. Overall, we found a clear precedence of social welfare over criminal policy considerations.

The statutory authorities to remove and to review appeals of removal assigned in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) exist in a complicated, interweaving relationship with the legal power to sentence held by judges of the criminal court. Judges do not retain the legal authority to decide on removal. Judges do, however, hold the jurisdiction to consider deportation at sentencing. The practice of judicial jurisdiction in turn has potentially significant effects for subsequent practices of jurisdiction under the IRPA, including where judges use their legal power to apply sentences protecting permanent residents from removal and/or losing their right of appeal. Despite these important jurisdictional connections, how judicial authority to consider deportation is enacted has not received scholarly examination. This paper draws from an analysis of case law and interviews to address this gap, tracing how judges practice their jurisdiction when sentencing permanent residents.

This paper explores the use of mindset material in terrorism cases. Mindset material is a broad category of evidence, including social media activity and internet search histories, relied on to infer or imply that the accused is affiliated or aligned with terrorists. Although mindset material plays a central role throughout the justice process in terrorism cases, no work to date has explored and discussed its use in depth. In this paper I draw on doctrinal and empirical findings, including interviews, to examine how and why it has come to play such a central role in terror cases. While mindset material is a well-intentioned tool used to selectively enforce broadly drafted and vaguely defined terrorism offences, it is also a blunt tool, and sees great emphasis placed on the accused's inferred status as terrorist (or not). In this paper I explore and problematise the use of mindset material and the inferences drawn from it, specifically in relation to to fantasists, the merely curious, and young autistic defendants. I posit that mindset material is symptomatic of a need to revisit the substantive law and to rethink the proper role of the criminal law in preventing terrorism.

The gravity of the crime committed has been considered ‘a factor of fundamental importance’ when deciding the early release of a person convicted by the ad hoc tribunals. Hence, most of the decisions rendered by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, for Rwanda and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals include this factor and determine whether it weighs in favour of or against early release. Conversely, when deciding the reduction of the sentence in the case of Thomas Lubanga, the International Criminal Court Panel stated in 2015 that ‘unlike at other international criminal tribunals, the gravity of the crime committed is not a factor that in itself weighs for or against reduction of sentence’. In fact, none of the decisions delivered by the International Criminal Court to date mention gravity. This drastic change reflects the differences in the corresponding statutes and rules of procedure and evidence and ultimately seeks to avoid a double count since the gravity of the crime committed is arguably the most important factor in the determination of the sentence. This divergence is examined in greater detail in this article, drawing on comparative, empirical research to establish the role played by gravity in early release decisions. Ultimately, it is argued that although the explanatory power generally attributed to gravity is often overrated, it is essential to a thorough early release assessment, whether included as a prerequisite per se or indirectly integrated into a wider prognosis of the risk of recidivism.

Judiciary and litigation are the two most prominent types of activities within the legal profession. The judicial aspect of the profession entails the interpretation of laws and the administration of justice in a fair and impartial manner. As a concept, justice entails protecting society from offenders and evildoers who deviate from society’s norms and engage in illegal behaviour by punishing and sentencing them. Due to the predominance of the human factor in the legal profession, which has such a significant impact on the lives of all members of society, it is crucial to investigate whether there is a guiding force behind dispensing justice and, if so, how effective these guidelines or policy measures have been. As crime rates rise and societal standards fall in the contemporary era, the legal profession grapples with the complexities of modern criminal behaviour. Particularly in the realm of judicial sentencing, there is a need for guidelines that account for the diversity of crimes and their individualistic nature. In India, long pungencies in court cases and a decline in the State’s conviction rate further exacerbate these issues. This paper examines the pressing need for comprehensive, well-structured sentencing guidelines that promote transparency, fairness and efficiency in the judicial process. Through a detailed review of recent high-profile court cases and an analysis of current practices and policies, this paper highlights the urgency of reform in the sentencing process to enhance public trust in the legal system. This article provides additional information on the subject.

Do elected judges tailor criminal sentences to the electorate’s ideology? Utilizing sentencing data from North Carolina’s Superior Courts—which transitioned from statewide to local elections in 1996—we study whether judges are obliging to voters’ preferences. We find some evidence of responsiveness: judges from liberal districts were more lenient, while those from moderately conservative districts assigned harsher sentences. Judges from increasingly conservative districts did not change their sentencing patterns, which leads to lower re-election rates. These findings suggest that judges adapt their behavior to retain office, or else they are held accountable by the public.