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Thank you! Plea Bargaining. Why do innocent people accept plea bargains? Broken systems lead to plea bargaining The overuse of trial waivers or plea bargains is linked to the following issues: Access to a lawyer: If someone has been arrested, they should have access to a lawyer before they are interrogated by the police.
Safeguards for plea bargaining Fair Trials is campaigning for safeguards that can make plea bargaining fairer. These safeguards include: Access to a lawyer: The decision to plead guilty can have huge consequences. Plea bargaining reinforces racism within the US criminal system: Black and Latino people get worse offers than white people.
They also get less counselling about making a decision to waive their right to a trial. For misdemeanour marijuana cases, Black people are 19 percent more likely white people to be offered a plea deal that involves prison. Latino people are 14 percent more likely than white people to be offered a plea deal that involves prison. Trial waivers in Europe In Europe, the approach to plea bargaining varies from country to country.
In particular, trial waivers disproportionately impact: People from racialised groups. People on low incomes are less likely to afford lawyers or avoid prison by paying fines. People who are vulnerable might not understand their rights or the risks involved when waiving a trial.
Find out more The findings of research across 90 countries are published in our report, The Disappearing Trial: Towards a rights-based approach to trial waiver systems. Key Stats. Keep up to date Receive updates on our work and news about Fair Trials globally. Find us on social media. Legal Info. The Organisation and Charity Information. And public defenders would get stretched a wee bit thinner. Even so, kids would sit in jail for years awaiting trial, turning that one year potential sentencing into three, until it was their turn in the well.
The government is not going it get what it wants. Advocates of eliminating plea bargains are counting on this. Without a larger budget, prosecutors would have to make some hard choices about who to prosecute and who to let walk. It seems likely to me that the net effect would be a reduction in aggregate prison time. The ones found guilty would be pounded into the ground by draconian sentences, much higher than the legislature intended, and these long sentences would be concentrated on a small group of people, which is arguably unfair.
The other big problem with eliminating plea bargaining is that lots of crimes would go unpunished. Many of them would go on to commit more crimes against the public. Eventually, they would be prosecuted and imprisoned, but in the meantime they could wreak havoc on the innocent. It seems likely that the result would be a lot more crime. Somehow I doubt that would be the case.
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