New Publication!

Jackie Hodgson and Laurène Soubise have recently published their article, 'Understanding the sentencing process in France'. You can read the article abstract below, and the full article can be found at: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/685538

Jackie Hodgson and Laurène Soubise have a new forthcoming publication in 45 Crime and Justice (ed. Michael Tonry), Sentencing Policies and Practices in Western Countries:Comparative and Cross-National Perspectives, on 'Understanding the Sentencing Process in France'.

French sentencing is characterized by broad judicial discretion and an ethos of individualized justice that is adapted to the rehabilitation of the offender. The current approach aims to prevent recidivism through rehabilitation and so protect the interests of society as well as reintegrating the offender as reformed citizen. In opposition to this approach is that of the political right, characterized by the recent Sarkozy regime, which favors deterrence through harsher penalties, minimum prison sentences and increased incarceration, including after the sentence has been served in the case of offenders considered dangerous. This article looks at the practice as well as the theory of French sentencing and locates the sentencing process (for it is a process, not a single event) within the broader context of French inquisitorially rooted criminal procedure. It argues that the central part played by the prosecutor in criminal cases (including in case disposition through alternative sanctions), her role in recommending a sentence to the court and the court’s invariable decision to follow this suggestion, together with the unitary mature of the French judicial profession, means that despite the broad discretion afforded the sentencing judge, there is a remarkable degree of consistency in the penalties imposed. It examines the range of penalties available and considers the most recent addition put forward by the Consensus Commission and legislated in 2014, the contrainte pénale, suggesting that this is unlikely to have a great impact without the investment of resources in the probation service and a change in the judicial culture which still favors simple sentencing options, including imprisonment, to the array of alternative options now in place.

Jackie Hodgson contributed to the Handbook on Comparative Criminal Procedure edited by Jacqueline E. Ross and Stephen C. Thaman and soon to be published by Edward Elgar Publishing.

This Handbook presents cutting-edge research that compares different criminal procedure systems by focusing on the mechanisms by which legal systems seek to avoid error, protect rights, ground their legitimacy, expand lay participation in the criminal process, and develop alternatives to criminal trials, such as plea bargaining, as well as alternatives to the criminal process as a whole, such as intelligence operations. The criminal procedures examined in this book include those of the United States, Germany, France, Spain, Russia, India, Latin America, Taiwan, and Japan, among others.

Jackie's own contribution is entitled 'From the Domestic to the European: An Empirical Approach to Comparative Custodial Legal Advice'.

Next week, Jackie Hodgson - with the assistance of her PhD student, Divya Sukumar - will be training over 80 officers from Greater Manchester Police on safeguards for young suspects during police interrogation. This training session flows from Jackie's participation in a large-scale, EU-funded research project in collaboration with colleagues from four other jurisdictions.

More information on the research project is available on the Criminal Justice Centre website.

The second volume on safeguards for young suspects has been published. It is the result of a large-scale research project funded by the European Union and with the participation of researchers from five jurisdictions, including Prof Jackie Hodgson. The project consists of a comparative empirical study of the different legal procedural safeguards in place in Belgium, England and Wales, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands.

The first part of the research project resulted in the publication of 'Interrogating Young Suspects - Procedural Safeguards from a Legal Perspective' (Panzavolta, M., de Vocht, D., Van Oosterhout, M. and Vanderhallen, M. (eds) (2015) Intersentia). The second volume has now been published: 'Interrogating Young Suspects: Procedural Safeguards from an Empirical Perspective' (Panzavolta, M., de Vocht, D., Van Oosterhout, M. and Vanderhallen, M. (eds) (2016) Intersentia). This second volume contains the results of the empirical research conducted in the five Member States consisting of focus group interviews and observations of recorded interrogations. These country reports are followed by an integrated analysis and a set of guidelines.

Both volumes are available on the project website under project publications http://youngsuspects.eu