Human smuggling judicial practice Hungary (Szeged) 2021-2023

In our empirical analysis, 545 case files were examined with regard to the classification of the offense under the Criminal Code, the identified mitigating and aggravating circumstances, the type and length of the sentence, as well as procedural aspects. Overall, the statistical analysis suggests that judicial practice is not necessarily consistent. Of the nine aggravating circumstances examined, only three were associated with significantly longer sentences, while among the seven mitigating factors analyzed, only three were linked to statistically significant sentence reductions. While the number of mitigating circumstances shows a significant but weak correlation with the length of imprisonment, no such significant relationship was found for the number of aggravating circumstances. We attempted to predict sentencing outcomes using regression models and neural networks. We found that incorporating the mid-range penalty into the models not only improved predictive performance, but also reduced the relative importance of the mitigating and aggravating factors—and their number—in determining sentence length.