Pros And Cons Of Plea Bargaining

Janet Vargas
SOC 370
Pros and Cons of Plea Bargaining
Many criminal cases are resolved outside the court in which they will have both sides come to an agreement.An agreement made in a criminal case between a prosecutor and its defendant, before reaching a trial is a plea bargain. The prosecutor offers an opportunity to the defendant to plead guilty. By agreeing to plead guilty to a crime the defendant would in exchange get a prosecutor’s promise to convince the judge to reduce the sentence. It is really impossible to predict what a jury is going to decide in a trial. Plea bargaining is used for prevalent reasons that may include that defendants can avoid the time and the cost of defenfing themselves at trial which can bring the risk of a tougher

Prosecutors benefit from plea bargaining because it enables them to secure high conviction rates while avoiding the expense, uncertainty, and opportunity costs of trials. By obtaining guilty pleas, prosecutors can pursue more cases, potentially resulting in greater aggregate deterrent or incapacitative effects with a finite amount of resources. Overloadded courts also benefit from plea bargains and why its common. The US Supreme court has recognized plea bargain as necessary for excessive courts.”Our office keeps the courtrooms busy trying 5 percent of the cases, if even 10 percent end in a trial the system would break down”( Zimring and Frase,1980:506). The courts have made few promises in which the prosecutor are required to keep the assurance of the agreement once it has been reached. the agreement should make sure that the defendants are aware of the consequences and that the pleas are made of ones own free will. Because it is less expensive and time consuming than a full scale trial, especially a jury trial, prosecutors can prosecute more people, be more productive in processing cases, and more effective in obtaining convictions through a guilty plea. Based on this efficient, “assembly line” type of justice system, the government can add more crimes to the criminal code so that the citizens’ life is even more controlled and regulated. Since pleading guilty eliminates the jury that would be impaneled for a full scale trial, judges, but especially prosecutors, gain much greater power over the conduct of the case, more control over the outcome of criminal cases, and are therefore more able to make defendants “offers that they cannot