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ENQUIRE PROJECT DETAILS BY GENERAL PUBLIC |
| Project Details |
| Funding Scheme : | General Research Fund | ||||||||||||||||
| Project Number : | 14609918 | ||||||||||||||||
| Project Title(English) : | An Empirical Investigation of the Sliding Scale of Sentence Discounts for Guilty Pleas in Hong Kong | ||||||||||||||||
| Project Title(Chinese) : | 香港刑期折扣遞減比率下承認控罪的實證研究 | ||||||||||||||||
| Principal Investigator(English) : | Dr Cheng, Kevin Kwok Yin | ||||||||||||||||
| Principal Investigator(Chinese) : | |||||||||||||||||
| Department : | Faculty of Law | ||||||||||||||||
| Institution : | The Chinese University of Hong Kong | ||||||||||||||||
| E-mail Address : | kevincheng@cuhk.edu.hk | ||||||||||||||||
| Tel : | 39434428 | ||||||||||||||||
| Co - Investigator(s) : |
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| Panel : | Humanities, Social Sciences | ||||||||||||||||
| Subject Area : | Social and Behavioural Sciences | ||||||||||||||||
| Exercise Year : | 2018 / 19 | ||||||||||||||||
| Fund Approved : | 421,500 | ||||||||||||||||
| Project Status : | Completed | ||||||||||||||||
| Completion Date : | 31-12-2021 | ||||||||||||||||
| Project Objectives : |
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| Abstract as per original application (English/Chinese): |
The plea and the sentence are two of the most important, if not the two most important, aspects of the criminal justice process. The aim of the study is to investigate the impact of the timing of guilty pleas on court sentencing under Hong Kong’s new sentencing framework for guilty pleas. This study builds on the PI’s previous work on late guilty pleas.
Previously in Hong Kong, a one-third general sentence discount was given by the court regardless of when the plea was entered until the start of trial. This fundamentally changed with the new sentencing guidelines – the sliding scale of sentence discounts – introduced in September 2016. Now the court must consider the stage at which the guilty plea was entered. Nonetheless, the law still provides judges with flexibility to depart from the guidelines. Previous studies in other jurisdictions have found that sentence reductions are dependent on other variables such as the defendant’s demographic characteristics and criminal record. Therefore, it would be incorrect to simply presume that all criminal cases correspond exactly to the sentence discounts recommended by the sliding scale guidelines and more in-depth research on this is vitally needed.
The purpose of the study is to determine the potential effects the stage of guilty plea has on the criminal sentences in Hong Kong and whether the impact of sentence reductions differs for different offences and defendants. The study also seeks to ascertain whether judges depart from the recommended reductions, and if so, under what situations would they do so. A quantitative methodology will be adopted. Using the “Reasons for Sentence” in court cases provided by the Hong Kong Judiciary, a series of variables affecting sentencing will be codified, including the stage when the guilty plea was entered or if the defendant was convicted after trial. The empirical data will then be subjected to statistical analyses.
Despite the significance of sentencing and the attention that it often draws from the media and the public, there is a dearth of research on sentencing in Hong Kong especially from an empirical perspective. This study will help to identify what impact the timing of guilty pleas has on sentence outcomes under the new sentencing regime along with other variables that may influence sentencing in Hong Kong. This study will show how the new sliding scale of sentence discounts works in practice and provide useful findings for researchers and practitioners. 認罪及判決是刑事司法程序中最重要的兩個方面。這項研究的目的是調查香港在新的判刑框架下，認罪的時間對法庭判決的影響。這項研究建基於首席調查員早前關於遲延認罪的工作上。 以往在香港，無論在審判開始之前何時認罪，法院都給予三分之一的一般刑期折扣。2016年9月引入的新的量刑指南從根本上改變了這情況 – 即刑期折扣遞減比率。 現在法院必須考量表示認罪的階段。儘管如此，法律仍然為法官提供了可不同與準則的靈活性。之前在其他司法管轄區的研究發現，減刑取決於其他變量因素，例如被告的背景特徵和犯罪記錄。因此，簡單地假定所有刑事案件的判決須跟從刑期折扣遞減指引是不正確。故此，須對此進行更深入的研究。 本研究的目的是考量認罪階段對香港刑事判決的潛在影響，以及減刑幅度會否因罪行及被告的不同而有所不同。本研究還試圖研究法官是否偏離建議的減刑幅度，如果是，他們將在何種情況下這樣做。本研究會採用定量方法。當採用香港司法機構提供“判刑理由“時， 將會數據化一系列影響判刑的可變因素，包括認罪的階段或被告是否在審訊後被定罪，然後對數據進行統計分析。儘管判刑的重要性經常引起媒體和公眾的關注，但在香港判刑方面的研究卻相當缺乏，特別是從實證的角度的研究。本研究將有助於了解香港在新的判刑制度下，認罪請求的時間對判決結果的影響，以及可能影響判刑的其他變量因素。本研究將說明新的刑期折扣遞減比率如何在實踐中發揮作用，並為研究人員和從業人員提供有用的結論。 |
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| Realisation of objectives: | The project objectives, as outlined above, have all been realized. Let me begin by providing some background to the project and its general purpose. Since 2016, the Hong Kong courts, have introduced what is referred to a “sliding scale of sentence discounts” based on the defendant’s timing of guilty pleas. Previously in Hong Kong, defendants who plead guilty to the crimes that they are charged with, would customarily receive a one-third sentence discount compared to what they would otherwise have received if they had opted to go to trial but ultimately lost i.e., being convicted post-trial. The one-third sentence discount would typically be available up until the day of trial. After the Court of Appeal ruling in HKSAR v. Ngo Van Nam; HKSAR v. Abdou Maikido Abdoulkarim [2016] 5 HKLRD 1; [2016] HKCA 397, however, new sentencing guidelines were issued so that the amount of sentence discount awarded by the courts would correspond with the stage of when the guilty plea by the defendant was made. The full one-third sentence discount would be awarded if the defendant pleaded guilty at the first available opportunity. The sentence discount would be reduced to 20-25% if a trial date has been fixed but the defendant pleaded guilty before the day of trial. The sentence discount is to be 25% if the defendant pleaded guilty on the first day of trial. The sentence discount is further reduced to less than 20% of the defendant pleaded guilty after the trial has commenced. In other words, the sentence discount now operates on a sliding scale based on the timing of guilty pleas. The Court of Appeal has held that sentencing judges have overriding discretion in deviating from the sentencing guidelines. The general purpose of the current project was to empirically investigate how the sliding scale of sentence discounts for guilty pleas work in practice by closely examining sentencing decisions in Hong Kong’s District Court. To achieve this overarching purpose, the project objectives was broken down into three parts: to investigate how guilty pleas and its timing influence sentence outcomes; how other factors besides guilty pleas influence sentence outcomes; and to ascertain whether judges in Hong Kong depart from the recommended sentences provided by the sliding scale of sentence discounts for guilty pleas. The major findings and research outcomes of the three objectives are elaborated in section 6.1 below. As originally indicated in the original proposal submitted, to achieve the project objectives, a dataset would need to be created. An original dataset was created through coding over 1000 ‘Reasons for Sentence’ by the Hong Kong District Court from the beginning of 2018 to the end of 2019. These reasons are written and are made publicly available by the Hong Kong Judiciary. My research team and I meticulously coded the Reasons for Sentence to a dataset for quantitative analyses. Descriptive statistics were first used to give an overview of the sample, including how many cases corresponded to the different stages of when defendants pleaded guilty or not pleaded guilty. In short, descriptive analyses allowed us to determine the prevalence of early and late guilty pleas. It would also allow for an enumeration of the percentage of cases that do and do not abide by the guilty plea guidelines (objective 3). Statistical models were performed to determine the potential effects of the timing of guilty pleas on sentence (objective 1) and the potential effects of other variables besides guilty pleas on sentence (objective 2). Different models that used the actual guilty plea discount awarded by the judge instead of the sentence as the outcome variable helped us to determine to what extent the new sentencing guidelines for guilty pleas were adhered to (objective 3). All the efforts of this 36 months project accumulated to a research monograph entitled “The Timing of Guilty Pleas: Lessons from Common Law Jurisdictions” that at the time of this completion report has been accepted and is in production by Cambridge University Press (CUP). Two additional peer-reviewed articles were published based on the project, which are both more methodology-focused compared with the monograph. | ||||||||||||||||
| Summary of objectives addressed: |
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| Research Outcome | |||||||||||||||||
| Major findings and research outcome: | Objective 1: Descriptive statistics revealed that there were no major differences in terms of being sentenced to immediate imprisonment for defendants who pleaded early, late or not at all. Differences were found for sentence length, where defendants who pleaded not guilty received prison terms in the highest range. The most interesting result from multivariate models was that the guilty plea stage did not influence whether the defendant was sentenced to immediate imprisonment. Similarly, no significant difference was found between early and late guilty pleas in terms of sentence length. However, defendants who pleaded not guilty and were convicted after trial were found to receive significant higher sentence lengths. This underscores a plea-trial difference in Hong Kong (See Cheng, Timing of Guilty Pleas). Objective 2: Other variables besides guilty pleas were found to be significantly associated with sentence as well. An important variable was age, where the youngest adult defendants in Hong Kong were less likely to receive an immediate imprisonment sentence. Drug offenses in particular would likely lead to a longer imprisonment term. Likewise for defendants with a prior criminal record (See Cheng, Timing of Guilty Pleas). Focusing on just drug trafficking, age was also found to be negatively associated with plea-adjusted sentence length (Cheng, Ri, & Pushkarna, 2020). Objective 3: Judges, despite having discretion to depart from the sentencing guidelines, were found to closely adhere to the sliding scale of sentence discounts (See Cheng, Timing of Guilty Pleas). Where there are departures, female defendants were found to receive higher guilty plea discounts than their male counterparts (See Ri & Cheng, 2022). | ||||||||||||||||
| Potential for further development of the research and the proposed course of action: |
The findings of the project revealed that there is much to be studied about sentencing in Hong Kong. In response, I have applied for and was successful in receiving another GRF grant to empirically investigate the influence of sentencing factors on sentences, this time not just in the District Court but High Court as well. The methodology will be similar, however, next project will focus on aggravating and mitigating factors as well as potential influences of different actors, such as judges, prosecutors, and defence lawyers on sentence outcomes. | ||||||||||||||||
| Layman's Summary of Completion Report: | The aim of the study is to investigate the impact of the timing of guilty pleas on court sentencing under Hong Kong?s new sentencing framework for guilty pleas. Guilty pleas play a significant role in the day-to-day criminal process, but little attention has been paid to the study of guilty pleas in Hong Kong. This project helps to identify what impact the timing of guilty pleas has on sentence outcomes under the new sentencing regime along with other variables that may influence sentencing in Hong Kong. Overall, the findings of this project show how the new sliding scale of sentence discounts works in practice in Hong Kong?s courts. | ||||||||||||||||
| Research Output | |||||||||||||||||
| Peer-reviewed journal publication(s) arising directly from this research project : (* denotes the corresponding author) |
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| Recognized international conference(s) in which paper(s) related to this research project was/were delivered : |
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| Other impact (e.g. award of patents or prizes, collaboration with other research institutions, technology transfer, etc.): |
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| SCREEN ID: SCRRM00542 |