 Prosecutors, judges and sentencing disparities: Evidence from traffic offenses in FranceAlessandro Melcarne (), Benjamin Monnery and François-Charles Wolff International Review of Law and Economics, 2022, vol. 71, issue C Abstract: While there is widespread evidence that sentences for similar cases tend to differ across courts, the production of sentencing disparities by prosecutors versus judges has received very limited attention to date. In this paper, we focus on this issue using traffic offenses data from neighboring courts in South-East France. First, we measure disparities for observably similar cases both at the extensive margin (type of sentences) and intensive margin (quantum) and find large differences in sentencing across courts. Second, we decompose those disparities between the influence of prosecutors through their procedural choices (simplified versus classical criminal procedures) and that of judges who always have the final word on sentences. While there is heterogeneity in the role of prosecutors between courts, we find that most sentencing disparities cannot be explained by the sole decisions of prosecutors. Keywords: Courts; Judicial disparities; Sentencing; Prosecutors; Mediation analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:irlaec:v:71:y:2022:i:c:s0144818822000333 DOI: 10.1016/j.irle.2022.106077 Access Statistics for this article International Review of Law and Economics is currently edited by C. Ott, A. W. Katz and H-B. Schäfer More articles in International Review of Law and Economics from Elsevier |
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