The role of character-based personal mitigation in sentencing judgments

Article

Belton, I. and Dhami, M. 2024. The role of character-based personal mitigation in sentencing judgments. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. https://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12376
TypeArticle
TitleThe role of character-based personal mitigation in sentencing judgments
AuthorsBelton, I. and Dhami, M.
Abstract

Personal mitigating factors (PMFs) such as good character, remorse and addressing addiction help sentencers evaluate an offender’s past, present and future behavior. We analyzed data from the 2011- 2014 Crown Court Sentencing Surveys in England and Wales to examine the relationship between these PMFs and custodial sentences passed on assault and burglary offences, controlling for other sentencing relevant factors. Beyond revealing the distribution and co-occurrence of the three PMFs, it was found that good character, remorse and addressing addiction all had a significant mitigating effect. The effects of addressing addiction were the strongest of the three across both offence types, while good character had a stronger effect on burglary than assault. In addition, some mitigating factors appear to be underweighted when they occur together. We consider the implications of these findings for sentencing policy and practice.

KeywordsSentencing; personal mitigation; remorse; custody; courts; judicial decision-making
Sustainable Development Goals16 Peace, justice and strong institutions
Middlesex University ThemeCreativity, Culture & Enterprise
Research GroupCognitive Psychology and Neuroscience Research Group
Forensic Psychology Research group
PublisherWiley
JournalJournal of Empirical Legal Studies
ISSN1740-1453
Electronic1740-1461
Publication dates
Online13 Jan 2024
Publication process dates
Accepted07 Dec 2023
Deposited16 Aug 2023
Output statusIn press
Publisher's version
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File Access Level
Open
Copyright Statement

© 2024 The Authors. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies published by Cornell Law School and Wiley Periodicals LLC.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12376
LanguageEnglish
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