Locating the Judge within Sentencing Research

Abstract

Research into sentencing is undertaken from a range of theoretical, disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Each approach offers valuable insights, including a conception of the judge, sometimes explicit, often implicit. Little scholarly attention has been paid to directly interrogating the ways in which different research traditions construct the judge in the sentencing process. By investigating how different research approaches locate the judge as an actor in sentencing, theoretically and empirically, this article addresses that gap. It considers key examples of socio-legal scholarship which emphasise the judge as operating within experiential, emotional and social, as well as legal dimensions. This growing body of research offers a more social, relational and interactive understanding of the judge in sentencing, extending and complementing the valuable, but necessarily limited, insights of other research approaches about the place of the judge in sentencing.

Creative Commons License
Except where otherwise noted, content in this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Published: 2017-05-22
Pages:46 to 63
Section:Articles
Fetching Scopus statistics
Fetching Web of Science statistics
How to Cite
Roach Anleu, S., Brewer, R. and Mack, K. (2017) “Locating the Judge within Sentencing Research”, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 6(2), pp. 46-63. doi: 10.5204/ijcjsd.v6i2.380.

Author Biographies

Professor Sharyn Roach Anleu is a Professor of Sociology at Flinders University, Adelaide, and a past President of the Australian Sociological Association. She was one of three editors of the Journal of Sociology (2001 - 2004) and is the author of Law and social Change (Sage, London) and four editions of Deviance, Conformity and Control (Pearson, Sydney) and numerous articles on deviance, legal regulation and the criminal justice system. Professor Sharyn Roach Anleu is currently undertaking research with Professor Kathy Mack on judicial officers and their courts in Australia.

Flinders University
 Australia

Dr Russell Brewer BA SFU, BA (Hons) Flinders, Ph D ANU is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Flinders Law School, and a founding member of the Centre for Crime Policy and Research. His research interests include policing, crime prevention, Internet crime, organized crime, and social networks. He has a range of publications in these areas, a monograph for the Clarendon Series in Criminology, Oxford University Press.

Flinders University
 Australia

Professor Kathy Mack BA Rice, JD Stanford, LLM Adel is Emerita Professor of Law, Flinders Law School. She is the author of a monograph, book chapters and articles on ADR, and articles on legal education and evidence. With Professor of Sociology Sharyn Roach Anleu, she has conducted extensive empirical research involving plea negotiations and is currently engaged in a major socio-legal study of the Australian judiciary.