4 - Testing the decision model for multiple disparate counts

Summary

The structure of the model describing the way in which judges attempt to determine, according to current sentencing policy, the effective sentence for a case involving multiple offences from different legal offence categories, each offence properly regarded as a separate transaction, and once appropriate sentences have been fixed for the multiple offences, is defined by the sixteen principles set out in the previous chapter. The next step is to derive testable propositions or general predictions from these principles and to formulate a set of sentencing problems for the purpose of testing the model by way of these propositions. This is the task of the present chapter. In the first section testable propositions are stated and related to the model; following this, there is the presentation of the problems used to test these propositions; in the final section, the problems are grouped according to the proposition for which they serve as a validity test.

It is noted in parenthesis that a sample of judges was required to determine effective sentences for the cases comprising the sentencing problems; at the same time the judges provided verbal protocols (immediate retrospective reports) of their thinking. In a second session the author explained how the decision model applied to each of the problems and the judges were asked to comment on its validity (reflective retrospective reports). These aspects of the method, addressed in detail in the following chapter, are foreshadowed here to facilitate the reader's understanding of parts of the present discussion.