Reuters has the story here:

A court in China has used a software program to help decide prison sentences in more than 1,500 criminal cases, a Hong Kong newspaper said on Wednesday.

The software, tested for two years in a court in Zibo, a city in the eastern coastal province of Shandong, covered about 100 different crimes, including robbery, rape, murder and state security offenses, the South China Morning Post said, citing the software's developer, Qin Ye.

"The software is aimed at ensuring standardized decisions on prison terms. Our programs set standard terms for any subtle distinctions in different cases of the same crime," Qin was quoted as saying.

A Beijing-based software company had worked with the Zichuan District Court in Zibo since 2003 to develop the program and input mainland criminal law, the paper said.

Judges enter details of a case and the system produces a sentence, the paper said.

Of course, the fact that something is "computerized" doesn't tell us anything; the real question is how the computer is programmed.

  Thanks to Deven Desai for the link.