QUOTE
When farmer Li Jiaxin came up for trial in Zibo, Zichuan District, Shandong Province, China, he faced something new: computer-aided sentencing.
Li had used a knife to slash the face and arm of his victim. Apparently contrite over what he had done, Li paid 17,800 yuan ($2,200) in compensation and turned himself in to police. He eventually came up for trial and was found guilty. Before the sentencing, though, the judge entered information about Li's crime into a computer program. Based on the crime, the victim's injury, and the fact that Li had paid compensation and surrended himself to authorities, the software calculated that he deserved a 5.4 month jail sentence. The judge gave him six.
Welcome to modern sentencing procedures in China, where a pilot project is underway to study the feasibility of such computer-assisted sentencing. Computers aren't capable of deciding cases, of course, but they can easily give judges access to sentencing guidelines and a massive body of precedent that makes it easy to see how others have dealt with mitigating circumstances.
Li had used a knife to slash the face and arm of his victim. Apparently contrite over what he had done, Li paid 17,800 yuan ($2,200) in compensation and turned himself in to police. He eventually came up for trial and was found guilty. Before the sentencing, though, the judge entered information about Li's crime into a computer program. Based on the crime, the victim's injury, and the fact that Li had paid compensation and surrended himself to authorities, the software calculated that he deserved a 5.4 month jail sentence. The judge gave him six.
Welcome to modern sentencing procedures in China, where a pilot project is underway to study the feasibility of such computer-assisted sentencing. Computers aren't capable of deciding cases, of course, but they can easily give judges access to sentencing guidelines and a massive body of precedent that makes it easy to see how others have dealt with mitigating circumstances.