Project description
Punitiveness levels in European continental legal systems
Law and criminal justice systems depend significantly on consistent sentencing processes. Funded by the European Research Council, the RE-CON-SENT project examines how sentencing systems operate across Europe, focusing on the interplay between legal frameworks, judicial discretion and real-world practice. Using comparative legal analysis, large-scale empirical data and experimental work with practitioners, the project seeks to understand the mechanisms that structure sentencing decisions and drive variation across jurisdictions. Ultimately, RE-CON-SENT will contribute to creating a clearer picture of sentencing as a dynamic, evolving process.
Objective
Consistent sentencing is a cornerstone of modern rule-of-law criminal justice systems. To enable judges to consider diverse circumstances at sentencing, legal frameworks provide judges with discretion (some countries also supply guidelines to increase consistency). The challenge is to provide judges with the right amount of discretion and guidance. This can be done in various ways, but there has not yet been any comprehensive assessment of these or of the limits they set across continental Europe. Attempts to evaluate the disparity of judicial practices run into the difficulty of identifying comparable cases. Typical sentencing studies consider behaviours to be the same if they fall within the same legal offence definition. However, each offence encompasses a wide range of behaviours, which impedes proper identification of disparities.
This project will redefine our understanding of sentencing discretion and its application by making a complex assessment of discretion within three dimensions: legal frameworks, judicial practices, and guidelines. I will analyse and classify approaches to structuring discretion in every European continental legal framework and quantify their discretion and punitivity. I will combine innovative data and methods – thorough court descriptions of criminal behaviour and natural language processing – with detailed administrative data to examine sentencing practices in two similar, yet also different countries: Finland and Czechia. I will design European guidelines for a single jurisdiction currently not employing them and experimentally evaluate their overall effectiveness, mechanisms and punitivity.
By deconstructing sentencing along these three dimensions and examining each in detail, I will paint a holistic picture of sentencing discretion, its extent, how it is structured across Europe, and its impact on punitiveness. The project will open multiple new research pathways and counterbalance the prevailing common-law-centric discourse.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project has not yet been classified with EuroSciVoc.
Be the first one to suggest relevant scientific fields and help us improve our classification service
You need to log in or register to use this function
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
-
HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
See all projects funded under this programme
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
See all projects funded under this funding scheme
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
See all projects funded under this callHost institution
Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
116 36 Praha 1
Czechia
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.