📄 Court report ⚖️ Before sentencing

presentence

1 8.1

A report made before a judge chooses a punishment to help the court

noun
/ˈprɛzənˌtɛns/

Formal

: informe pre-sentencia

We chose this format because of the realistic time constraints in asking busy judges to participate in a study balanced with our desire to replicate a meaningful presentence report as part of the decision-making task.
presentence report
presentence investigation

Examples

This court worked with defendants at the presentence stage of the judicial process and included periodic drug testing, ongoing judicial supervision, sanctions and incentives, and close monitoring.

Academic text (2005)
The majority of drug courts follow the presentence or diversion model, wherein if defendants complete the program requirements, criminal charges against them are dismissed (Belenko).

Academic text (2005)
Presentence reports, Noonan said—notwithstanding Cabrera's own statements in court—indicate that Cabrera believes the normal rules of society do not apply to him.

Blog text (21)
These are not real pre-sentence diversion programmes as those have been consistently supported by the UN, (71) although the existence of presentence diversion is one of the core indicators used to evaluate a State's juvenile justice system. (72) Reasons leading to shortcomings of Vietnamese criminal procedure.

Academic text (2018)
The presentence report provided the judge with essential information about the defendant's background.
Before deciding on the punishment, the court carefully examined the presentence investigation findings.
The defense attorney submitted a detailed presentence report to help mitigate the client's sentencing.

Surface Forms

presentence singular

presentences plural

Morphology

presentence = presentence (opaque) = pre + sentence

Although the adjective 'presentence' transparently means 'before sentencing', the noun meaning specifically 'presentence report or investigation' is a specialized legal use that is not predictable by standard conversion alone.

Etymology

Presentence comes from pre- 'before' and sentence 'decision', so as a noun a presentence is a report made before the judge gives a sentence and it helps the court understand the person before the final decision.