Incentives for accepting a plea bargain

Judges' Incentives for Accepting a Plea Bargain

For judges, the key incentive for accepting a plea bargain is to alleviate the need to schedule and hold a
trial on an already overcrowded docket. Judges are also aware of prison overcrowding and may be
receptive to the "processing out" of offenders who are not likely to do much jail time anyway.

Prosecutors' Incentive to Engage in Plea Bargaining

For prosecutors, a lightened caseload is equally attractive. But more importantly, plea bargaining assures a
conviction, even if it is for a lesser charge or crime. No matter how strong the evidence may be, no case is
a foregone conclusion. Prosecutors often wage long and expensive trials but lose, as happened in the
infamous O. J. Simpson murder trial.

Moreover, prosecutors may use plea bargaining to further their case against a co-defendant. They may
accept a plea bargain arrangement from one defendant in return for damaging testimony against another.
This way, they are assured of at least one conviction (albeit on a lesser charge) plus enhanced chances of
winning a conviction against the second defendant.

Defendants' Incentive to Plea Bargain

For a defendant in a criminal case, plea bargaining provides the opportunity for a lighter sentence on a
less severe charge, and to have fewer (or less serious) offenses listed on a criminal record. If thay are
represented by private counsel, defendants also save the monetary costs of a lengthy trial by accepting a
plea bargain.

http://criminal.findlaw.com/crimes/criminal_stages/stages-plea-bargains/plea-bargain-pros-and-
cons.html

Poor Police Investigations (less justice)

Additionally, some attorneys and judges argue that plea bargaining has led to poor police investigations
and attorneys who do not take the time to properly prepare their cases. They believe that instead of
pursuing justice, the parties rely on making a deal and that the details of what happened and the legal
consequences for those actions are less important.

http://resources.lawinfo.com/en/Articles/Plea-Negotiations-Criminal-Lawyer/Federal/the-pros-and-
cons-of-plea-bargaining.html

Plea Bargaining Definition

A plea bargain is a negotiated agreement between a criminal defendant and a prosecutor in which the
defendant agrees to plead "guilty" or "no contest" to some crimes, along with possible conditions, such as
attending anger management classes, in return for reduction of the severity of the charges, dismissal of
some of the charges, or some other benefit to the defendant.

http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/plea-bargain/

The Bill of Rights makes no mention of the practice when establishing the fair-trial principle in the Sixth
Amendment, but the constitutionality of plea bargaining has been repeatedly upheld, and the bargain's
basic dynamic is well known to viewers of pulp TV. In fact, says Albert Alschuler, a University of Chicago
law professor, roughly 90 percent of convictions occur when the defendant waives the right to trial and
pleads guilty. And most of those pleas involve a deal that reduces punishment.

http://truthinjustice.org/bargaining.htm

According to a National Crime Research Bureau (NCRB) study, 2002, it was reported that some three
quarters of all persons held in prisons had not been sentenced to jail, but were “under trial”—that is,
awaiting trial. Nearly 2,220,000 cases took more than 3 years to reach court, and about 25,600
exhausted 10 years before they were completed. A staggering number of prison inmates awaiting trial
have already been imprisoned, longer than the most rigorous sentence that they could ever be given for
the offence they are alleged to have committed.

As on February 27, 2006, the backlog of court cases was as under: Supreme Court 33,635 High Courts
33,410,040 Subordinate Courts 2,53,06,458.