oversentence
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Verb
[edit]oversentence (third-person singular simple present oversentences, present participle oversentencing, simple past and past participle oversentenced)
- (transitive) To issue a sentence that is harsher than necessary.
- 2017 July 25, Cory Doctorow, “SLIM: An open, transparent, hand-computable sentencing algorithm”, in Boing Boing[1]:
- Machine learning companies are making big bucks selling opaque, secretive sentencing algorithm tools to America's court systems: the vendors of these systems claim that they are too sophisticated to explain, and use that opacity to dismiss critics who say the algorithms oversentence black and poor people.
- 2023 December 8, Anthony Ehlers, “Who is a political prisoner?”, in Chicago Reader[2]:
- Judges consistently oversentence people to prove they are “tough on crime,” and do so under the guise that such sentences will deter others.