PLEA BARGAINING. A COMPARATIVE STUD

This study describes three jurisdictions which have imposed different degrees of constraint on prosecutorial discretion in the plea bargaining process. On the scene observations, interviews, and court records were assessed for internal consistency and to formulate conclusions about the respective processes.;Previous descriptive and empirical studies of plea bargaining were found to be consistent only if categorized by constraint in prosecutorial discretion, political, social, cultural, and legal variables.;An announced policy to restrict prosecutorial discretion was significantly affected by the political, social, and cultural settings of the jurisdiction. (The applicable law in the jurisdictions was the same so it was dismissed as a significant affecting variable.) Although the three jurisdictions had adopted different policies and prosecutorial discretion with the avowed purposes of encouraging or discouraging plea bargaining, the systems plea bargained substantially the same percentage of cases. It was found that this phenomenon was a function of case load and cohesiveness among the regular participants in the judicial system.;Constraint on prosecutorial discretion in plea bargaining contributed to the exercise of discretion at the charging stage of the judicial process. When discretion was severely constrained, the decision to charge was carefully considered and accuracy was result. Few cases were dismissed and a significant percentage of cases was disposed of with pleas of guilty as charged without negotiations. At the other extreme, when there were few constraints on discretion, the decision to charge was cavalier. In order to expeditiously dispose of cases, a significant percentage was dismissed. Relatively few and a low percentage of the cases were terminated with pleas of guilty as charged without negotiation.;The efficiency and fairness of a jurisdiction were affected by social, cultural, and political variables of the jurisdiction and the constraints on prosecutorial discretion in the plea bargaining process. The existence of cohesiveness among the regulars in the judicial system and accuracy at the charging stage contributed to prompt final disposition of cases, a high percentage of findings of guilty, a low percentage of dismissals, a high percentage of pleas of guilty as charged without negotiations, and closer conformity to legislative authorized terms at sentencing.;The study raised, but did not attempt to definitively answer, a question about whether inefficiency and unfairness in a system unduly impacted on Blacks in the community. In view of the racial make-up of the general populations, all of the jurisdictions had a disproportionately large percentage of Blacks in their respective defendant populations. The jurisdiction which was most inefficient had the largest differential between percentages of Blacks in the general population and in the defendant population. However, it did not appear that the personal characteristics of the defendant populations affected the efficiency and fairness of the jurisdictions.;If policy decisions are to be founded in scholarship, further studies of the plea bargaining process are needed to ascertain the impact of constraints on prosecutorial discretion in other political, social, cultural, and legal settings.