Punishment and Policy in International Criminal Sentencing: An Empirical Study

Abstract

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) have sentenced over 130 perpetrators for genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, or war crimes. Sentencing judgments discuss the factors considered by the judges and impose a term of imprisonment. We regressed the sentence length meted out for each perpetrator on the doctrinal factors said to explain the term of imprisonment and on other factors rumored to affect sentencing. We find that the gravity of the crime and aggravating factors declared by the Tribunals as sentencing factors are significantly related to sentence length but that the mitigating factors proclaimed by the tribunals—all but one of which are associated with diplomatic and policy objectives—are not significantly related to the term of imprisonment. We conclude that international criminal sentences prioritize punishment of the individual based on the seriousness of the crime over the other diplomatic and policy goals that the judges claim to be pursuing. We conjecture that this discrepancy is based on functional differences: the sentencing judgment discussion seeks to advance the many policy objectives of the Tribunals, while the declared term of imprisonment is largely an expressive act of retributive justice, which might also facilitate deterrence and reconciliation.