Plea Bargaining Practices: Less Covert, more Public Support?

Abstract

Although a common practice in many legal systems, plea bargaining (PB) tends to be held in low esteem by the public at large. In the present study, which was based on a survey of a national sample of Israeli respondents, a factorial design methodology was used to examine public attitudes toward varied PB scenarios. It was hypothesized that opening up PB procedures to parties other than the traditionally involved “insiders” would enhance public support for PB. The findings of the study generally confirmed this hypothesis, albeit not completely: The effect of decreased covertness was minimal. This article concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of the findings.

Public Approval of Plea Bargaining in Hong Kong

“…In terms of plea bargaining, it seems the public do not regard the offense itself as a salient factor. This is contrasted with previous studies that found crime seriousness to be important (Herzog, 2003(Herzog, , 2004. Moreover, in contrast to Hypothesis 2, the public was not more supportive of plea bargaining for female offenders.…”

“…Many empirical studies that assess plea bargaining utilize the public to serve as either mock lawyers or mock defendants (Bordens, 1984;Dervan & Edkins, 2013;McAllister & Bregman, 1986;Tor, Gazal-Ayal, & Garcia, 2010). The few studies that have directly measured public approval of plea bargaining focused on manipulating the type of plea bargain only (Cohen & Doob, 1989;Herzog, 2003Herzog, , 2004.…”

The effects of gender, family status, and race on sentencing decisions

“…By allowing multiple variables of the survey to vary and by controlling for respondents' characteristics (e.g., age, gender, race), this method allows the researcher to examine the effects of several variables simultaneously while presenting unbiased estimates of each variable (Rossi & Anderson, 1982). Due to the strengths of this method, it has been used to examine several sociological and criminological issues, such as public perceptions of justice and the sentencing of male and female defendants (Miller, Rossi, & Simpson, 1986), public opinion on plea bargaining (Herzog, 2004), and juvenile court judges' decision making (Applegate, Turner, Sanborn, Latessa, & Moon, 2000).…”

Therapeutic Jurisprudence in Practice: Changes in Family Treatment Court Norms Over Time

“…Previous research on the justice system as a whole describes shortcuts that evolve to deal with the high load of cases (Blumberg 1967). For example, without plea bargaining in criminal court, the justice system would collapse under the pressure of the number of cases needing attention (Blumberg 1967; Herzog 2004). In the case of FTC, the ability to take time with each case to build rapport between the judge, treatment team, and client is central to what makes problem‐centered courts, like FTC, unique and potentially therapeutic.…”