The purpose of this dissertation is to examine three factors that can influence sentencing: the domestic nature of the crime, the type of attorney, and the level of judicial transparency. Normatively, the part on the domestic nature examines how it should be approached. In contrast to other sentencing factors, such as criminal histories for which jurisdictions adopt a uniform approach, each jurisdiction treats the domestic factor differently. The domestic nature may serve both as a mitigating as well as an aggravating factor. There has been a shift in attitudes concerning family values in society. In spite of the potential legislative developments, I have argued in this part that traditional mores widely shared across the criminal justice system tend to result in a lack of deterrence of domestic violence offenders. Consequently, the progressively aggravated sentence scheme is introduced as a second-best solution in order to counter the backlash from the legal enforcement side and to enhance the effectiveness of punishment as a deterrent. The remaining two parts are empirically based on econometric models. In the segment of the dissertation dealing with the impact of judicial transparency, a complete dataset for all intentional injury judgments from a Chinese court before and after the introduction of mass publication requirements (2012-2017) was analyzed. Upon mass publication, judgments have become longer, sentences have become more consistent, and the severity of sentences has decreased. The part which examined the influence of different types of counsel on sentencing utilized a hand-coded dataset of Chinese murder cases. It was found that the sentences of cases represented by private lawyers and legal aid attorneys were not significantly different. Furthermore, it rejects the hypothesis that the type of lawyer has played a major role in sentencing.