NEW YORK, NY – In a report released today, the Vera Institute of Justice, with support from the Safety and Justice Challenge, an initiative of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, highlights the mounting concerns about plea bargaining’s coercive nature and its critical role in fueling mass incarceration. Examining a small but growing body of empirical studies, researchers found a mix of complicated, nuanced, and sometimes contradictory research findings.

Most criminal convictions—97 percent in state courts in 2009 and 90 percent in federal court in 2014—are the result of guilty pleas. And of these, an estimated 90 percent are a result of plea bargaining—an informal and unregulated process by which prosecutors and defense counsel negotiate charging and sentencing concessions in exchange for guilty pleas. Researchers face many challenges in studying plea bargains as they are undocumented and happen outside of courtrooms. However, studies have revealed the ways in which plea bargaining can bypass due process, coerce innocent people to plead guilty, and perpetuate racial inequities.

“It is troubling that plea bargains form the bedrock of our criminal justice system when so little is known about them,” said Léon Digard, research strategy editor at Vera and one of the authors of the new report. "Reviewing the literature and studies on plea bargaining reveals a desperate need for greater transparency in the process - a process that, for some people, might not be a 'bargain' at all."

With little known about plea bargaining, studies like these are vital to understanding a process central to how the criminal legal system currently operates. With the American justice system in crisis, this review and analysis brings to light the ways the criminal legal system has become an ad hoc administrative process.