Milestones and Current Dilemmas: Evaluation of Sentencing Standardization for Illegal Possession of Drugs in China

Jia Wu, Yang Xia () and Apei Song ()
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Jia Wu: School of Law, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Yang Xia: School of Law, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Apei Song: School of Law, Society, and Criminology, Faculty of Law and Justice, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia

Laws, 2023, vol. 12, issue 3, 1-23

Abstract: It has been more than ten years since the nationwide sentencing standardization reform was implemented in China to solve the widespread problem of uneven sentencing in criminal justice. A statistical analysis of 1595 written judgments of illegal possession of drugs showed that the reform of sentencing for the standardization amount-based crimes has achieved remarkable results, and judges’ discretion has been highly normative and consistent. Under the same criminal circumstances, the degree of consistency between the amount involved in the crime and imprisonment has significantly increased, which is more in line with the standards of formal justice. However, the effect of the sentencing standardization reform declined as the amount involved in the crime increased. This exposes the shortcomings of the standardized sentencing model when considering multiple crimes; these include confusion between the amount and circumstances of a crime, the imbalance between crime and punishment, and the application of discretionary circumstances in sentencing depending on the amount involved in the crime. Therefore, it is necessary to attach more importance to the evaluation of the legitimacy of the sentencing range established by criminal law in subsequent sentencing reforms and to further refine and perfect the standardized sentencing mode, with a shift from formal justice to justice in form and substance.

Keywords: sentencing standardization; justice; conviction model; illegal possession of drugs; evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 E61 E62 F13 F42 F68 K0 K1 K2 K3 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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