InfoSoud dataset and its possibilities for researchers: Do courts impose harsher sentences after a protest against a penal order is filed?
Abstract
Official datasets are the most frequently used by sentencing scholars and the court system. Nevertheless, when investigating certain topics, researchers often have to merge these datasets with their own.
We illustrate this approach by collecting and presenting a dataset containing detailed descriptions of court proceedings for all cases from 2006 onward (InfoSoud), which we then merge with the official criminal court dataset. This allows us to analyze which sentences are imposed after a protest has been filed against a penal order, i.e., a court order by which the accused is found guilty but is only subject to lenient penalties.
Our findings reveal that although jurisprudence has long criticized the imposition of harsher sanctions following a contested penal order, it is still a rather common phenomenon. Many offenders who file a protest are either not found guilty or are given harsher sentences than those executable via penal order.