NCJ Number
195486
Journal
Law & Society Review Volume: 35 Issue: 3 Dated: 2001 Pages: 607-632
Date Published
2001
Length
26 pages
Annotation
This article examines the effect of case-processing time on sentencing outcomes for individuals who commit economic crimes in Taiwan.
Abstract
The authors studied an official dataset from the Investigative Bureau of the Ministry of Justice to test their hypothesis that as the time between the decision to prosecute and the judicial sentencing decreases, the likelihood of being sent to prison and of receiving a relatively long sentence increases. The data set under examination included all 11,235 offenders in Taiwan who were referred to the district prosecutors’ office for economic crimes between 1991 and 1996. Systematic random sampling was employed to generate a sample of 1,867 economic offenders. Of these offenders, this study concentrated on the 823 offenders who were actually convicted of economic crimes. Results of various statistical analyses indicate that case-processing time is an indicator of offense severity and of judicial sentencing decisions. The authors’ hypothesis was partially supported in that the shorter the case-processing time, the more likely it became that the offender would be sentenced to a prison term. Tables, references, appendix