Plea Bargaining: A Neglected Issue?
| Author | Monika Sabor |
| Date | 01 December 1985 |
| Published date | 01 December 1985 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455058503200405 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Plea Bargaining: A Neglected
Issue?
Monika Sabor
Probation Trainee, Cardiff
Why is it that the Probation Service has remained so silent on the
subject of plea bargaining? Is it because it takes place covertly
that probation officers ignore its prevalence? Is it because it is
such a delicate issue that they are reluctant to become involved?
Or could it be that the Probation Service has not fully considered
the ethical implications of the practice? This article seeks to draw
attention to these implications, in the hope that increased
alertness to the incompatibility of plea bargaining with justice
may spur probation officers, both individually and collectively, to
take some action.
The term ’plea bargaining’ refers to negotiation
Researching the Discount
which occurs mformally, outside the Court setting,
In the light of this, it is hardly surprising that
at the arrest stage between police and defendants,
researchers and critics have tended to avoid the
or later, between lawyers and defendants,
subject, a notable exception being John Baldwm
whereby, m
return for some
discount m
sentence,
and Michael Mcconvdle, who, despite con-
the defendant agrees to plead guilty, either to the
siderable opposition by the legal profession to their
whole charge, or to a lesser count m
the indictment.
work, have persisted in their research of plea
In contrast with the American system where plea
negotiation. In 1978, these researchers tested the
bargaining is recogmsed and regulated by the
extent of discount m
sentence given m
exchange
Courts, in Britain there is no tnstituttonalised
for a guilty plea by takmg a sample of 150
structure in which plea negotiation occurs, and the
defendants who were late plea-changers, and
official response is both elusive and contradictory.
matching them on a group basis according to
In R. v. Turner (1970),’ the Court of Appeal
several criteria relevant to age, sex and offending
strongly denounced plea bargaining, statmg that
history, with two separate samples of 150
’The judge should . never indicate the sentence
defendants, one
which he
group who
pleaded not guilty, and
is minded to impose’ The Lord Chief
were subsequently convicted, and the other group
Justice remarked that the case had brought out into
who had determined a guilty plea in advance. By
the open ’the vexed question of so-called plea
controlling the other
bargaining’ Yet eight
major factors likely to affect
years later m
R
v Atkmson,
the
when the trial
severity of the sentence, the researchers
judge told counsel before the trial
postulated that
that if the defendant would plead guilty
any variation m
sentence among the
to one
three
charge, ’We
groups could be attributed to the different
can dispose of it all today, and he
pleas
would
they tendered
be out m
the sunshine
there would be
The results of their research’ showed that the
no question of his going to prison’, the Court of
Appeal’s
group who changed their pleas to guilty at the last
response was to deny emphatically that
moment
received the lightest sentences and were
a bargam had been suggested, and to state:2
less likely than the other two groups to receive
‘Plea bargaining has no place m the English cnmmal
custodial sentences, while defendants who un-
law
Our law having no...
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