European Seminars on the Economics of Crime (ESEC)

The right to be heard is a fundamental principle underlying most legal systems and constitutes a basic human right. Legal scholars argue that the right to be heard is essential for the rule of law because it helps achieving truth and legitimizes judicial sentencing. However, the labor and time-intensive nature of hearings has led to an overloaded criminal justice system, particularly for mass crimes. In this study, we experimentally investigate the importance of hearings in the context of Switzerland's penal order system. Penal orders are prosecutorial indictments that, if the defendant does not insist on a judicial review, automatically become the final sentence, even for prison sentences up to six months. For most cases, prosecutors do not conduct any hearings and decide based on the police files only, de facto undermining the defendants' right of being heard. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in collaboration with a public prosecution office and randomly invited defendants to a prosecutorial hearing. allowing us to investigate the causal effect of hearings on prosecutorial sentencing and downstream effects on future crime.