Impact Of Social Factors On Conviction And Sentencing

Along with the advancement of modernization progress, China’s social structure is moving toward diversification, which has triggered the unbalanced conviction and sentencing of a series of cases. From the perspective of sociology pattern of conviction and sentencing, the uneven phenomenon cased by social factors exerts ignorable impact on case results. Both the status gap between plaintiff and defendant and popular will are considered as the factors exerting important impact on the results of conviction and sentencing; and the impact is infiltrated into the judgment by means of the prejudice and discretion of judges.The theoretical circle widely believes that cases’ social structure, relationship, judicial management system and popular will are the major social factors influencing conviction and sentencing. It is highly possible that the final decisions of cases made by judges may change due to the introduction of those social factors. Therefore, from the quantitative and qualitative perspectives, this paper conducts a statistical analysis on the large-scale case sample and compares individual cases, to further test on the effect range and depth of crucial social factors influencing conviction and sentencing.The empirical study has shown that parts of social factors can impact the result of conviction and sentencing to some extent; then what should be done to reduce and regulate those influencing factors specifically? To answer this question, this paper proposes the following suggestions, on the basis of the result of empirical analysis:Firstly, in order to reduce the perception of judges in terms of heterogeneous information in society, procedural articles can be used to exclude the introduction or testimony involving the social information of cases out of the court; on the other hand, the definitive peremptory challenge system can be used to separate judges with possible prejudice.Secondly, in face of the interference to judges from relationship factors, the strengthened punishment on bribery will be helpful apparently to contain the unhealthy trend of bribery; at the same time, judges shall be regulated to avoid from participating in the cases of their original domiciles, to help them shake off the restriction of personal relationship, so as to make fair and honest judgment.Thirdly, in order to avoid the constraints caused by local force and administrative force to judicial power, the judicature management system shall be adjusted timely; on the one hand, local courts shall be regulated and controlled by the government uniformly, to ensure the dependence of courts; on the second hand, the system of judicial committee shall be canceled, and the administrative positions within courts shall be reduce as much as possible to better remove the administerization of courts.Fourthly, reasonable social factors able to supervise the conviction and sentencing can be introduced into the judicial judgment through legal approaches; currently, it is meaningful realistically to improve China’s system of people’s assessors and regulate the adaption process of experts’ opinions.In conclusion, in face with the judicial situation of unbalanced conviction and sentencing, the fundamental countermeasure to this problem for us is to admit all the impacts exerted by the social factors frankly, make clear the crucial reasons and explore the approaches of reduction and regulation from the source. And this is the only way leading to the realization of judicial fairness.