Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:29:23.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Does It Pay to Plead Guilty? Differential Sentencing and the Functioning of Criminal Courts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

David Brereton  and
Jonathan D. Casper
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Do defendants who plead guilty receive lighter sentences than those with similar charges and attributes who exercise their right to trial? The assertion that they do has long been at the heart of the literature describing and explaining the plea-bargaining process, though it has been questioned in some important work published recently. The existence of sentence differentials is particularly hard to document statistically, because a successfully operating policy of punishing those who go to trial will in fact minimize the number of cases in which the sanction for trial has to be imposed. Examination of data from three California counties, as well as consideration of various theoretical concerns, leads us to argue that sentence differentials are likely to characterize jurisdictions whose disposition patterns are based on inducing most defendants to plead guilty.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , 1982 , pp. 45 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

*

We wish to thank Milton Heumann and James Eisenstein for their useful comments on a previous draft. This research was supported, in part, by Grant 79-NI-AX-0042 from the National Institute of Justice. All responsibility for the arguments and conclusions rests with the authors.

References

ALSCHULER, Albert W. (1968) “The Prosecutor's Role in Plea Bargaining,” 36 University of Chicago Law Review 50.Google Scholar
ALSCHULER, Albert W. (1975) “The Defense Attorney's Role in Plea Bargaining,” 84 Yale Law Journal 1179.Google Scholar
ALSCHULER, Albert W.-(1976) “The Trial Judge's Role in Plea Bargaining, Part 1,” 76 Columbia Law Review 1059.Google Scholar
CASPER, Jonathan D. (1972) American Criminal Justice: The Defendant's Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
CASPER, Jonathan D.-(1978) Criminal Courts: The Defendant's Perspective. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
CASPER, Jonathan D.-(1979) “Reformers v. Abolitionists: Some Notes for Further Research on Plea Bargaining,” 13 Law & Society Review 567.Google Scholar
CHURCH, Thomas W. Jr. (1976) “Plea Bargains, Concessions and the Courts: Analysis of a Quasi-Experiment,” 10 Law & Society Review 377.Google Scholar
CHURCH, Thomas W. Jr.-(1979) “In Defense of ‘Bargain Justice,‘” 13 Law & Society Review 509.Google Scholar
EISENSTEIN, James and Herbert, JACOB (1977) Felony Justice: An Organizational Analysis of Criminal Courts. Boston: Little Brown.Google Scholar
FEELEY, Malcolm M. (1978) “The Effects of Heavy Caseloads,” in Goldman, S. and Sarat, A. (eds.) American Court Systems: Readings in Judicial Process and Behavior. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Sarat, A. (1979a) The Process is the Punishment. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Sarat, A. (1979b) “Perspectives on Plea Bargaining,” 13 Law & Society Review 199.Google Scholar
FRIEDMAN, Lawrence M. (1979) “Plea Bargaining in Historical Perspective,” 13 Law & Society Review 247.Google Scholar
GIBSON, James L. (1978) “Race as a Determinant of Criminal Sentences: A Methodological Critique and a Case Study,” 12 Law & Society Review 455.Google Scholar
HEUMANN, Milton (1975) “A Note on Plea Bargaining and Case Pressure,” 9 Law & Society Review 515.Google Scholar
HEUMANN, Milton (1978) Plea Bargaining: The Experiences of Prosecutors, Judges, and Defense Attorneys. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
HEUMANN, Milton and Colin, LOFTIN (1979) “Mandatory Sentencing and the Abolition of Plea Bargaining: The Michigan Felony Firearm Statute,” 13 Law & Society Review 393.Google Scholar
HUB AY, Charles (1978) “California Determinant Sentences Impacts.” Santa Monica, California: Rand Corporation, unpublished paper.Google Scholar
KRITZER, Herbert M. (1978) “An Introduction to Multivariate Contingency Table Analysis,” 22 American Journal of Political Science 187.Google Scholar
MATHER, Lynn M. (1973) “Some Determinants of the Method of Case Dispositions: Decision-Making by Public Defenders in Los Angeles,” 8 Law & Society Review 187.Google Scholar
MATHER, Lynn M. (1979) Plea Bargaining or Trial? The Process of Criminal Case Disposition. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
NARDULLI, Peter F. (1978) The Courtroom Elite: An Organizational Perspective on Criminal Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger.Google Scholar
NEWMAN, Donald J. (1956) “Pleading Guilty for Considerations: A Study of Bargain Justice,” 46 Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science 780.Google Scholar
NEWMAN, Donald J. (1966) Conviction: The Determination of Guilt or Innocence Without Trial. Boston: Little Brown.Google Scholar
NISBETT, Richard and Lee, ROSS (1980) Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings in Social Judgment. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
RHODES, William M. (1978) Plea Bargaining: Who Gains? Who Loses? Washington, D.C.: Institute for Law and Social Research.Google Scholar
RUBINSTEIN, Michael L. and Teresa J., WHITE (1979) “Alaska's Ban on Plea Bargaining,” 13 Law & Society Review 367.Google Scholar
UHLMAN, Thomas M. and N. Darlene, WALKER (1979) “A Plea is No Bargain: The Impact of Case Disposition on Sentencing,” 60 Social Science Quarterly 218.Google Scholar
N. Darlene, WALKER-(1980) “‘He Takes Some of My Time, I Take Some of His’: An Analysis of Sentencing Patterns in Jury Cases,” 14 Law & Society Review 323.Google Scholar
UTZ, Pamela J. (1978) Settling the Facts: Discretion and Negotiation in Criminal Court. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
VETRI, Dominick R. (1964) “Guilty Plea Bargaining: Compromises by Prosecutors to Secure Guilty Pleas,” 112 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 865.Google Scholar
YALE LAW JOURNAL (1956) “Comment: The Influence of the Defendant's Plea on Judicial Determination of Sentence,” 66 Yale Law Journal 204.Google Scholar