Prosecutors, judges and sentencing disparities: Evidence from traffic offenses in France

Alessandro Melcarne, Benjamin Monnery and François-Charles Wolff
Additional contact information
Alessandro Melcarne: EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Benjamin Monnery: EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

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 SouthEast 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.

Date: 2022-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03913071
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in International Review of Law and Economics, 2022, 71, pp.106077. ⟨10.1016/j.irle.2022.106077⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-03913071/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Prosecutors, judges and sentencing disparities: Evidence from traffic offenses in France (2022)
Working Paper: Prosecutors, judges and sentencing disparities: Evidence from traffic offenses in France (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03913071

DOI: 10.1016/j.irle.2022.106077

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().