Multiple Convictions

Abstract

Little has been written about the sizable majority of defendants who are convicted of several offenses at the same time or have previously been convicted of others. That is not a small oversight. Efforts to address it expose fundamental conceptual problems. The biggest is the multiple offense paradox. Efforts to offer principled accounts of the sentencing of multiple offenses founder on it. In Western legal systems, individuals sentenced following multiple convictions receive a bulk discount that results in a lesser total punishment than if each conviction had resulted in the punishment normally imposed on a first offender convicted of a single offense. By contrast, sentences of people convicted of separate offenses in successive proceedings usually include recidivist premiums that result in harsher punishments, often much harsher, than first offenders receive for the same offense.