Whose decision is it anyway? Defendants’ prior experience shapes prosecutorial case dismissal

Criminal history refers to a criminal offender's prior conviction record, particularly in the context of sentencing that offender for a new offense. Judges in all jurisdictions have long used prior record as one of the primary determinants of an offender's punishment, and sentencing guidelines now formally build prior record into sentencing outcomes. However, the theoretical justification for enhancing sentences on the basis of prior convictions is disputed, and scholars are increasingly recognizing that prior record premiums may have negative impacts on important policy outcomes such as racial disparities, the aging prison population, proportionality in sentencing, and optimal prison resource allocation. An examination of how guidelines in various jurisdictions formulate prior record enhancements and how those formulations vary highlights ways in which criminal history enhancements may be modified to balance sentencing goals.

Explorations of differential justice suggest that apparent relationships between class, race, and legal treatment may be explained by the more extensive conviction histories found among lower class and minority populations. But these findings have emerged without adequate exploration of the antecedents of a defendant's criminal record. This article examines the determinants of accumulated criminal histories, viewing the conviction awarded a defendant as the first stage in the construction of a prior offense record. Path analytic techniques were applied to data drawn from a sample of persons arrested for murder in order to examine the nature of relationships among the demographic characteristics of defendants, their prior offense records, access to legal resources, and ultimate dispositions. Patterns evident from the analysis suggest that the operation of the criminal record in the legal system constitutes a continual cycle in the confirmation of criminality. Prior record, itself partly a product of discretionary treatment, becomes a salient factor in the accumulation of additional convictions not only through its direct effect but also through its influence on access to private counsel and bail, which in turn significantly affect outcome.

The prevalence and diversity of drug-related crimes in societies have grown to such an extent that stakeholders involved in combating this issue have been compelled to leverage legal and judicial systems to address it. Consequently, the concept of crime prediction has gradually entered the framework of criminal justice systems. In this regard, criminal justice systems have employed data mining techniques to adopt preventive policies aimed at combating drug-related crimes. The importance of data mining lies in its ability to transform the process of predicting drug-related crimes into a classification problem, wherein various features are utilized to uncover hidden knowledge. Essentially, this knowledge constitutes a classification system designed for the automatic identification of individuals with prior criminal records. This study employs a descriptive-analytical methodology with a quantitative survey approach. The statistical population comprises judicial case files of convicted individuals from the Enforcement of Judgments Office in Shahriar County, collected during the years 2017–2018. A unique dataset was created from this data, dividing the collected features into two classes: individuals with no prior criminal record and those with prior records. The algorithms examined in this study include multilayer perceptron, logistic regression, decision trees, naive Bayes, J48, and self-organizing networks. Data analysis was conducted using the WEKA software. The findings indicate, first, that the naive Bayes classification algorithm outperformed other algorithms in terms of accuracy and efficiency. However, the accuracy levels achieved by other algorithms were also notably high, reflecting the quality of the features. Second, data mining methods can play a significant role in predicting drug-related crimes. Based on the study’s results, it can be concluded that one of the primary methods for crime prediction is uncovering patterns of criminal behavior, a capability that data mining has provided to a considerable extent.

Taking a Stand on Taking the Stand: The Effect of a Prior Criminal Record on the Decision to Testify and On Trial Outcomes

The science article conducts a theoretical and legal analysis of a new field of scientific knowledge – legal psychology from the standpoint of its perception as an independent branch of law. In the context of the above, the problematic aspects of legal psychology as a scientific, educational and applied branch of legal knowledge are studied on the basis of previously developed by legal psychologists levels of interaction and integration of law and psychology. The formation of legal psychology as a science and vectors of application of its achievements in judicial practice is analyzed. The author's approach in the formation of a new independent branch of law – legal psychology and determining its place in the classification of branches of law is proposed. The author emphasizes the need and urgent demand for the separation of legal psychology as a separate special branch of law that can regulate specific legal relations inherent in the fundamental (profiling) branches of law. The relevance of the article is due to the fact that in domestic legal science the division of the legal system in the field is assessed not in terms of its practical value, but rather in terms of confirming and defending certain scientific and theoretical ideas and concepts, contrary to the expediency of combining certain legal relations in the branch of law to achieve the desired social result through comprehensive study and regulation of specific relations. This, in turn, slows down the formation of new branches of law demanded by legal practice, among which legal psychology is singled out. It is emphasized that the question of the branch affiliation of legal psychology has not only theoretical but also practical significance, uniting individual legal relations in the field of law in order to achieve the desired social result through comprehensive study and regulation of these relations. Attention is drawn to the special classification of legal psychology as a special branch of law, as the latter combines the rules of law governing public relations and related to primary social relations aimed at concretization, strengthening certain rules of basic branches of law, while providing special legal regime for a particular type of social relations. By subordination in legal regulation, legal psychology belongs to the procedural types of branches of law, as it combines the rules of law that determine the procedure, the order for implementing substantive law (criminal procedure, civil procedure, commercial procedure, administrative procedure law). It is proposed to include legal psychology in an independent branch of law, given the presence of features that are inherent in the branches of law; the specificity of the regime of legal regulation; its direct connection with the needs of practice; recognition of its achievements in judicial practice; unification of certain legal relations in the subject of law; conditionality of functional purpose and the place of this industry in the legal system (its type in the classification of industries).

An offender’s prior crimes affect sentencing outcomes in all common and civil law jurisdictions. In the US, however, guidelines assign an outsized weight to criminal history. Prior convictions have an important influence over sentencing outcomes and have done so since the creation of the guidelines, but recent research has questioned the over-reliance on prior record as a sentencing enhancer. This chapter surveys the retributive and consequentialist justifications for prior record enhancement policies, the shortcomings and critiques of those justifications, and empirical evidence of the overuse of prior record, especially in American jurisdictions. The chapter provides several recommendations for revising prior record approaches, including through reducing the magnitude of influence of priors, reducing guideline prior record categories and components, and reducing the longevity of priors.

Founder’s prior experience has been considered crucial for growth and success of venture firms. Despite the extant research on entrepreneurial experience, little is known about how entrepreneurs’ prior experiences are imprinted on them and the differences in knowledge these experiences shape. Based on the theories of entrepreneurial learning and effectuation-causation, this article investigates the influence of entrepreneurs’ prior firm founding and industry work experience. We tested hypotheses regarding the impact of these two types of entrepreneurial experience on the perception of long-term growth expectations and competitiveness of venture firms they found. The analysis was conducted on 1,610 newly founded venture firms in Korea surveyed over a four-year period from 2014 to 2017, and the ordered logit model was employed. The results show that prior firm founding experience results in positive long-term growth expectation. On the other hand, prior industry work experience has a positive effect only on organisation management competitiveness and has no statistically significant effect on technology competitiveness. This study extends the discussions of existing literature by focusing on the impact of founders’ prior experience on perceptions of their venture firms. Different role of entrepreneurial experiences can be explained by the different nature of the knowledge that is formed.

Private counsels and public defenders: A look at weak cases, prior records, and leniency in plea bargaining

Disillusionment with the therapeutic ideal has led to the current movement to reduce the jurisdiction of juvenile courts to cases in which they can exercise a crime-prevention function and to emphasize a fair, adversarial court procedure including representation by a lawyer. Two North Carolina juvenile courts were studied in 1975-1976 to determine their degree of concern about rehabilitation, crime prevention, and adversarial procedure. These courts showed a trend toward reducing their intake of cases with a less serious prior record and current offense and becoming more punitive with regard to the remaining cases. The dominant factors associated with disposition—particularly with the decision to commit the child to training school—were prior court record and seriousness of current offense. Other factors found to be of some importance were the child's family structure, support by the family as shown by court attendance, and whether the complainant in the case was a parent or probation officer. Race, family income, and the sex of the child had little or no effect on decisions to commit. Differences in individual judges' commitment rates were explained largely by differences in the cases they handled. Being held in detention before the court hearing made commitment more likely. The type of counsel a child had—private, individually assigned, or specialized Juvenile Defender—made no difference in whether he was adjudicated delinquent or committed. In fact, children represented by counsel were somewhat more likely to be committed than those without counsel. This and other findings of the study suggest that the participation of lawyers in juvenile court may be largely a formality, a token compliance with due process requirements rather than an integral part of court fact-finding.

Using sentencing data all over China from 2000 to 2011, this study examines the complex relationship between offenders’ prior record, current offense, hukou status and sentencing outcomes. Based on the perspectives and findings of previous studies conducted in common-law jurisdictions, this study suggests that prior record influences sentencing decisions in a complex manner and the number of prior conviction as a measure of prior record is not adequate. Furthermore, it also appears that the prior record effects are contingent upon current offense type, carrying more weight on the less serious current crime compared to more serious current crime. Finally, after illustrating the existence of sentencing disparity based on hukou status, this study uncovers that the interactive effects between prior record and hukou discrimination are dependent on the current offense type in China.

In birds, host experience can modify response to parasites but nothing similar is known for insects. We studied two desert tenebrionid beetles, the subsocial host Parastizopus armaticeps and its obligate and ubiquitous brood-(clepto)parasite Eremostibes opacus, which mimics the host’s odour spectrum. Nearly 10% of host burrows in the field (n=214) remain unparasitised even after introducing E. opacus experimentally (n=22). In discrimination tests, 7% of naive host beetles eject the parasite, showing individual variation in olfactory discrimination ability. To test for effects of prior breeding experience, naive (“first time”) or experienced (“second time”) breeders with or without prior parasite contact were confined with E. opacus at breeding onset, their behaviour recorded and parasite number counted on breeding completion. More first- than second-time breeding pairs completely excluded the parasite and second-time breeders with no prior contact with E. opacus had fewer parasites than any others. These pairs increased burrow-guarding dramatically, mostly during early reproduction, this being the best predictor of parasite number. Prolonged guarding, however, must be traded-off against other brood-care behaviours. Hence, it might pay breeding pairs to take the risk of accepting some parasites breeding within their burrow, and we expect this effect will be more pronounced if poor feeding and digging conditions are taken into account. This might explain why apparently 90% of the P. armaticeps breeding burrows in the field contain at least one parasitic E. opacus.

This study aims to provide answers for the two primary questions, namely: first, what is the role of legal psychology for public prosecutors in handling juvenile delinquency? Second, what are the obstacles in using legal psychology for public prosecutors in handling juvenile delinquency cases? The research method is normative juridical which is collaborated with the approache for empirical method. The results of this study are: first, the role of psychology for Public Prosecutors in Juvenile Delinquency cases is to understand the background, factors. Second, classification or classification of Juvenile Delinquency with the study of psychology, namely criminal psychology which is useful for Public Prosecutors in exercising their authority, such as bein a facilitator, mediator, and the process of prosecution as well as implementing decisions and as supervisors in coaching and resocialization. One of the obstacles to legal psychology for public prosecutors in dealing with juvenile delinquency is that not all public prosecutors have legal psychology skills because not all prosecutors receive integrated SPPA education. Not all areas which are the jurisdiction of the Public Prosecutor can provide facilities and infrastructure in law enforcement based on Legal Psychology.

The growth of legal psychology in the past ten or so years has been reflected in a relatively large number of edited volumes and symposia at various conventions, in the far greater visibility of psychologists in various interdisciplinary forums (such as the meetings of the American Psychology-Law Society), in the increasing frequency with which psychologists appear as expert witnesses (whose testimony addresses an ever broader range of issues), and, finally, in the founding of this journal. The main purpose of the discipline, presumably, is to explore various aspects of the interface between psychology and the law, and, more specifically, to enhance the understanding of the operation of the legal system by using psychological research methods and by testing the validity of psychological assumptions contained in legal statutes or else made by legal practitioners on an ad hoc basis. It appears self-evident that legal psychology has a strong applied orientation. Many psychologists do research in it primarily because the results of their theoretical and empirical efforts can be applied in an obviously important social domain. Many lawyers take an interest in it because they have grudgingly begun to believe that psychologists can make a practical contribution to the judicial process. Furthermore, the research emphasis has been on the various practical aspects of criminal procedure, rather than, for example, on lofty speculations about the role of psychological principles in legal doctrines; namely, a close examination of the literature in legal psychology shows that a very large proportion of all research studies falls into the

The article analyzes in detail the reforms implemented to develop the structure of the prosecutor's office, expand its areas of activity and ensure its independence. In order for the prosecutor's offices of Azerbaijan to meet the challenges of the modern era, personnel training and improvement, the application of new technologies and other reforms in the legal system are at the forefront. The prosecutor's office plays an important role in ensuring justice in the country, protecting the rule of law and protecting civil rights. This article also puts forward proposals on the harmonization of law enforcement agencies of Azerbaijan with international law and the directions of development of the prosecutor's office in the future. The article "Formation and Development Directions of the Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Azerbaijan" examines the historical stages of the establishment and development of the country's prosecutorial bodies. It provides a detailed account of the history, legal, and organizational structure of the Prosecutor's Office, along with the challenges faced in the modern era and the corresponding legal reforms. The article emphasizes the role of the Prosecutor's Office as a key law enforcement body in a democratic society, ensuring legality and the rule of law. It also highlights the importance of improving the functioning of the prosecutor's office in line with contemporary demands, enhancing the professional skills of prosecutors, and the significance of reforms within the law enforcement system. The article provides a detailed discussion on the establishment and formation of the Azerbaijani Prosecutor's Office, originally founded in 1918, with a particular focus on its reconstruction and modernization under the leadership of Heydar Aliyev. During Heydar Aliyev's leadership, significant changes were made in the functioning of the Prosecutor's Office, legal reforms were carried out, and necessary measures were taken to ensure that the Prosecutor's Office operated as an independent, strong, and effective body. As a result of these reforms, the Prosecutor's Office of Azerbaijan became an independent and reliable institution among law enforcement bodies, playing a crucial role in ensuring the rule of law and combating crime. Keywords: prosecutor's office, judiciary, courts, justice, investigation, corruption, human and civil rights, prosecutor's supervision, fight against crime.

Legal psychology is field of research which seeks to bring evidence-based practice to the vital work of the criminal justice system. This research is increasingly being conducted and its findings applied around the world. However, worldwide legal systems and their processes can vary greatly. In the current paper, we summarise discussions between legal psychology academics and criminal justice practitioners from Japan. Together, we examine how practices in the Japanese criminal justice system interact with the international evidence base for psychologically-informed ‘best practice’ approaches. Our discussion targets areas of popular study in legal psychology, focusing on concealed crime knowledge detection, line up identification procedures, and investigative interviewing of witnesses, suspects, and victims. Each section features a description of current Japanese practice, followed by a review of the current state of the relevant academic legal psychological literature. We then connect this practice and research synergy to a reflection with suggestions for future research. Taken together, our paper acts as a conduit to incentivise more research and practice collaboration for Japanese and non-Japanese audiences and presents opportunities for collective international legal psychology.