Sampling Bias in the Public Disclosure of Criminal Adjudication Documents——An Empirical Study of Samples between 2014 and 2022 from China Judgements Online
The criminal adjudication documents publicly disclosed on China Judgements Online serve as crucial resources for criminal law research and case reference in the data era.Statistical analysis reveals a sampling bias in the publicly disclosed documents compared with the entire corpus of criminal judg-ments,with varying probabilities of disclosure for different types of cases Second-instance and retrial ad-judication documents are relatively less likely to be disclosed compared to first-instance judgments.Within first-instance adjudication documents,cases with lower incident rates and less common charges have a lower likelihood of being disclosed compared to other charges.Moreover,within second-instance and retrial adjudication documents,those resulting in a judgment reversal or remand are more difficult to access publicly.The emergence of sampling bias may be associated with judicial concerns regarding the social impact of cases and hierarchical relationships.In the process of criminal law research,case refer-ence,and the reform of judicial transparency systems,targeted corrective measures should be taken to address these biases.
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