Guilty Plea: Plea Bargaining

Plea negotiation will remain central to the American criminal justice system for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, as the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice observed in 1967, "Few practices in the system of criminal justice create a greater sense of unease and suspicion than the negotiated plea of guilty" (p. 9). Plea bargaining raises fundamental issues of sentencing policy, of the propriety of compromising questions of criminal guilt, and of the use of governmental inducements to secure waivers of constitutional rights.