What determines offense seriousness: Typified story or quantifiable attributes?

• In Event: Exploring horizons of sentencing research with new data and methods

Abstract

In analyzing criminal behaviour, we can distinguish between a typified main story and the attributes of such a story. Understanding the extent to which they influence the perception of offence seriousness is crucial when we analyze and suggest how to structure sentencing. If typified main stories play an important role, we need to properly define and analyze them and starting points and sentence orientations are necessary. If quantifiable attributes strongly influence the perception of seriousness, we need to pay detailed attention to identifying aggravating and mitigating factors in sentenced cases and the role they should play. Using different typified cases of theft as sentenced in Czechia and conjoint analysis, we examine the role of typified story and quantifiable attributes in determining offence seriousness, and we compare it with the assessment of offence seriousness using living-standard analysis suggested by von Hirsch and Jareborg (1991).

Authors

• Tomáš Knap, Charles University; Institute of State and Law of the Czech Academy of Sciences

• Jakub Drápal, Charles University; Institute of State and Law of Czech Academy of Sciences