Plea Bargains: Pros and Cons

Plea Bargains: Pros and Cons

The Purpose and Types of Plea Bargains:

In principle, the purpose of plea bargains is to reduce the costs in both monetary measures and man-hours associated with trying every criminal case in court. To do so would require many more judges, prosecutors, and public defenders than are available at a tremendous cost to the judicial system and society. By allowing defendants to plead guilty (usually) in return for a lesser sentence, the aims of the criminal justice system are served at a substantially reduced cost. In the United States, approximately ninety percent of criminal charges are adjudicated through plea bargains.

Generally, plea bargains consist of a plea of guilty to a lesser charge after a negotiation among the prosecutor, defense counsel, and the judge, pursuant to which thee defendant accepts a sentence for a lesser charge instead of forcing the state to undergo the trouble and expense of a trial on the original charge for which the defendant was arraigned. In most cases, the defendant pleads guilty either to a less serious version of the same type of crime, such as exceeding the speed limit by 15 miles per hour instead of by

25-mile per hour, or committing a simple assault instead of assault and battery, etc.

In some instances, the defendant may be more concerned with the stigma associated with a specific crime (such as those involving sexual assaults) and may be offered and accept a plea to a completely different crime carrying a similar sentence, merely in order to avoid the social consequences of a record for the actual crime involved. In other cases, defendants may be offered unique plea arrangements, such as agreeing to certain kinds of counseling or to provide educational talks, such as in connection with first-time drunk driving offenses in which the defendant caused serious injuries or fatalities. In extremely rare circumstances, courts have approved very radical plea bargains, such as where a defendant greed to submit to a surgical castration and prolonged probation instead of incarceration for sexual assault.

The Benefits of Plea Bargains:

The primary benefit of the plea bargaining process is the reduction in cost to the criminal justice system and the increased efficiency resulting from the reduction in the volume of criminal case loads associated with the large number of criminal arrests. In addition, the plea bargaining process also provides a means for judicial leniency in cases where comparatively little purpose would be served by imposing the full weight of criminal law on every defendant. That is particularly true where the criminal act at issue is an isolated instance such as a crime of impulse where there is little risk of repeated criminal conduct by the defendant.

Very often, plea bargains allow the defendant to agree to perform some socially beneficial tasks for the purpose of deterring similar crimes which are more beneficial to society than traditional incarceration. For example, those charged with littering might agree to clean up highways while wearing signs publicizing the embarrassing consequences of littering or those charged with petty thefts like shoplifting wearing signs identifying their crimes publicly in lieu of ninety-day jail sentences. In other instances, plea bargains in which defendants agree to conditions including reimbursing victims of their crimes also serve more social utility than imposing a term of incarceration without any restitution to the victims.

Besides the issues of cost savings associated with plea bargains in lieu of trial, incarceration itself is tremendously expensive to administrate.

Furthermore, in some cases, defendants convicted of relatively non-serious crimes could be seriously harmed by incarceration alongside dangerous criminals.

The Problems with Plea Bargains:

The principal problem with plea bargains is that where they are not controlled carefully, they can result in the premature return of dangerous or career criminals to the streets, where innocent citizens are exposed to unnecessary dangers. More fundamentally, many of those opposed to plea bargains suggest that allowing criminals to bargain for a reduced charge conflicts with the underlying philosophy and purpose of penal responsibility: namely, that criminals receive just punishment for their crimes.

Ironically, the other main objection to plea bargaining arises in connection with concerns for criminal defendants. Specifically, the concern is that aggressive prosecutors could railroad innocent defendants into accepting plea bargains in lieu of prosecution for crimes of which they are, in fact, entirely innocent.