Guilty Pleas in an Inquisitorial Setting – An Empirical Study of France

Abstract

Anglo‐American guilty pleas have inspired criminal justice reformers in many inquisitorially based systems in recent years, in response to caseload pressures. In France, two different procedures based on the defendant's confession were introduced in 1999 and 2004 respectively: an out‐of‐court disposal (the composition pénale) and a prosecution pathway (the comparution sur reconnaissance préalable de culpabilité). Basing its analysis upon direct observations and interviews with French public prosecutors, this article examines the impact of these procedures on the French criminal justice system and its actors. Rather than a move from an inquisitorial to a more adversarial system, data collected for this study show a bureaucratization of the French criminal justice process. The role of public prosecutors is changing from that of judicial officers to caseload managers who have delegated part of their workload to less qualified staff for efficiency purposes.

Plea Bargaining, Conviction Without Trial, and the Global Administratization of Criminal Convictions

“…Studies have reported that it is the prosecutor, typically based on information provided by the police, that decides whether to use the plaider coupable on a given case and that there is no charge bargaining between prosecution and defense. However, possibly because of different practices between French jurisdictions, qualitative studies have differed on whether there is a negotiation over the sentence between prosecution and defense (Desprez 2007, Soubise 2018. Studies have also explained that since the participation of a defense attorney is required for the plaider coupable but can be waived for trials, prosecutors may exercise pressure on defendants to accept being tried without a lawyer (Soubise 2018).…”

“…However, possibly because of different practices between French jurisdictions, qualitative studies have differed on whether there is a negotiation over the sentence between prosecution and defense (Desprez 2007, Soubise 2018. Studies have also explained that since the participation of a defense attorney is required for the plaider coupable but can be waived for trials, prosecutors may exercise pressure on defendants to accept being tried without a lawyer (Soubise 2018). Also, possibly because variation among French jurisdictions, studies have reached different conclusions on whether sentences of effective imprisonment are used for defendants who plead guilty (Ancelot & Doriat-Duban 2010, Desprez 2007, Houllé & Vaney 2017, Saas et al 2013.…”

“…8 Langer that the plaider coupable and penal orders in combination with diversion mechanisms have produced a net-widening effect by diminishing the percentage of criminal cases that are dismissed unconditionally (Grunvald 2013). Importantly for this article's argument that there is a global trend toward the administratization of criminal convictions, many of these empirical studies have concluded that the introduction of these mechanisms in France has increased the power of the police, prosecutors, and other administrative staff over criminal cases (Desprez 2007, Grunvald 2013, Perrocheau 2010, Soubise 2018) and replaced the trial (Desprez 2007). In Canada, a few studies using a variety of methodologies have documented the contours of plea discussions and plea agreements (Ericson & Baranek 1982).…”

“…Although a few of these empirical studies have highlighted how plea bargaining and other trial-avoiding conviction mechanisms have empowered prosecutors (e.g., Alschuler 1968, Desprez 2007, Grunvald 2013, Lynch 2016, Perrocheau 2010, Soubise 2018, they have not adopted a comparative perspective that would enable an assessment of regional or global trends, something that this article's description of the administratization of criminal convictions tries to do.…”

“…Also, only a handful of these empirical studies, predominantly those on the United States, have theorized on the significance of plea bargaining and other trial-avoiding conviction mechanisms and on how they may be part of broader managerial trends in criminal justice away from adjudication (Feeley 1979;Kohler-Hausmann 2014Soubise 2018). However, these empirical studies have not discussed the phenomenon of administratization of criminal convictions covered in this article.…”