Decision support for sentencing in a common law jurisdiction

The inherent variability of each new conviction and the volume of potentially useful data complicate the provision of relevant information to judges carrying out sentencing activities. This paper describes a prototype sentencing information system which allows a judge to retrieve previous examples of sentencing behaviour by interactive instantiation of detailed templates. The case-based advisory system uses a direct manipulation interface to facilitate user interaction, The direct manipulation interface was well received and judges found that they were rapidly able to construct meaningful queries and retrieve appropriate data despite having limited prior experience of computer use. We identify the importance of dynamic query systems in relation to further development of applications of this type.