Software Sentences Chinese Criminals
September 15th, 2006 by MarkBrendan recently found a really interesting story titled Software does judge’s job in China [AFP via Yahoo! News].
BEIJING (AFP) - Judges are not usually at risk of losing their jobs to modern technology but that may be changing in China, where new software is handing down sentences automatically.
The Zichuan District Court in east China’s Shandong province has installed programs on judges’ computers that provide advice on the proper verdicts in criminal cases, the state-run China Daily reported.
It looks like the software only handles sentencing as opposed to verdicts. The original article is “量刑软件”会不会“腐败,” (”Can sentencing software be ‘corrupted?’”).
I’ve also noticed that Brendan has put up a translation of the most amusing poster I saw during my whole vacation on the mainland.
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September 26th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Yeah. The entire episode is much less egregious than the English language media suggests. Here’s a better question for discussion: will it be China or the US to discard capital punishment first?
September 26th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
not really a fair question, since the US Supreme Court actually did effectively outlaw capital punishment for about a decade. To my knowledge, China never has. Of course that raises the scary spectre that the US is sliding backwards…well, we’re still one leg up on the PRC and its ilk. The US, until 2005, executed minors, like China and these other stalwart examples of ‘law and order’ societies: Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Oh… I know the US is far better than China in terms of this Prince. The reason I think it’s an interesting question is that capital punishment seems to be largely a matter of judicial convenience for China, whereas in the United States my impression is that the issue has become a n entrenched focal point for partisan political conflict.
The barbaric practice will hopefully die out worldwide. I just think it’s an open question whether it will be easier for Americans to rid themselves of it than more authoritarian states where the authority to do so is concentrated even if the desire to do so is not.