Sentencing and computation of punishment

Abstract

Sentencing has long been a neglected area of analysis by both China’s academic and judicial circles. Nominally, there are no specific prescriptions in China’s criminal law regarding sentencing; in practice, however, courts arbitrarily integrate sentencing into the conviction proceedings of criminal trials. This lack of established specificity, when coupled with variation in the practice of different courts in various localities, has led to a general lack of transparency and substantial discrepancies in sentencing. Though some critics of the current system propose to unify the sentencing practice by adopting “computerized sentencing”, it is important to keep in mind that a sentencing system must necessarily be a dynamic process. As such, the focus and goal of sentencing should not merely be to compute a final punishment; rather, the system must justly reflect the society’s final evaluation of the offender and the crime. It is difficult to imagine that one-dimensional system as computerized sentencing can take into account the multitude of factors in considering a crime. Therefore, although it is necessary that the sentencing process should be separated from the conviction process, a “computerized” system may not be the best alternative.