Plea Bargaining in the Criminal Justice System: Who is Really Benefiting?

When looking at statistics from the United States Department of Justice (2000) there is not a significant difference in the conviction or plea bargaining rates with the assistance of a public defender or a private attorney. According to the 2000 statistics: a total of 37,188 defendants who retained public counsel plea bargained. This was a total of 87.1% who plea bargained their case, while only 5.2% went to trial. For those 18,709 defendants who used private counsel 84.6% plea bargained, while 6.4% took their case to trial. There is only about a 3% difference with the retention of a private lawyer or a public defender as to how often counsel plea bargains a case.

Now that we have discussed the average plea bargain rates we will discuss who it is benefiting. Plea bargaining is used to reduce lengthy sentences and receive lesser charges for a crime. There are however drawbacks from the use of plea bargaining. Some of these are things such as: an innocent defendant may be coerced into a confession and accept the guilty plea out of fear for a severe penalty if they are convicted. The second concern is that violent or habitual offenders may receive a lenient punishment and returned to the streets in a short amount of time. Thirdly, there has been public outcry that plea bargaining treats people unfairly. Due to this fact, there are some states that actually prohibit the practice.

Although the question remains, why use plea bargaining if it seems to be such a complex and dishonest system? The main reason is that it keeps our system going. By using the plea bargaining system we avoid serious congestion within the courts. While there are of course complications with the practice of plea bargaining this is true for most things in life. However when we weigh the pros and cons of plea bargaining, the pros outweigh the cons. There are far too many crimes committed in our country each day, which add up as the year passes. Without the use of plea bargaining the already over crowded prisons would be even worse.

While there are drawbacks, we must realize that the rights of people are the main concern. Of course there have been incidents of people slipping through the cracks, and people being coerced to plea guilty when they are in fact innocent, but we must take this with stride in knowing that justice does work. The criminal justice system is not perfect, but that is why we have laws that help protect our rights. For those people who feel that their rights have been violated they can take active measures. This may include appealing or even taking civil measures against those who have violated their rights.

As with any system we must take into account that there will be those who feel that the defendant’s rights are being violated when the criminal is set free or given a lenient sentence. The judges, jurors and attorneys decide what is appropriate for the sanction. We are a society which places the power into these people, so in essence we all have a percentage of power within the system. We choose to elect the judges, and District attorneys who play a large part of plea bargaining.

Overall, I feel that the plea bargaining system is effective and for the most part it works. To remove a practice such as plea bargaining would cause serious chaos and overcrowding of courtrooms, jails and prisons. While there is the realization that the system can, and sometimes does fail, we must remain focused. In most cases the good outweighs the bad and that is what is truly important.