Plea Bargaining Procedures Worldwide: Drivers of Introduction and Use

Gabriele Paolini, Elena Kantorowicz-Reznichenko*, Stefan Voigt

*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

Over the last three decades, plea bargaining has been adopted by many jurisdictions worldwide. However, a comprehensive account of both its adoption as well as its use is still missing. We survey 174 jurisdictions, finding that 101 allow plea-bargaining. For 52 jurisdictions, we also compute plea-bargaining rates, as the percentage of convictions imposed through plea bargaining over all criminal convictions. Relying on this novel dataset, we find that Muslim-majority populations and the French and Scandinavian legal origins are associated with lower probabilities of formalizing plea bargaining, while democracies are associated with higher probabilities. The Spanish and Socialist legal origins, a looser regulation of the procedure, and jury trials are associated with higher plea-bargaining rates, while higher income levels correlate with higher plea-bargaining rates only up to a certain point.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)27-75
Number of pages49
JournalJournal of Empirical Legal Studies
Volume22
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 19 Dec 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Empirical Legal Studies published by Cornell Law School and Wiley Periodicals LLC.

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  • Sector plan Recht-Empirical Legal Studies

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