# Plea Bargaining Usurping the Role of the People in Criminal Justice

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plea-bargaining-usurping-the-role-of-the-people-in-criminal-justice/813230>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [April 27, 2018, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plea-bargaining-usurping-the-role-of-the-people-in-criminal-justice/813230 "2018-04-27T17:11:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 8

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**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2018, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plea-bargaining-usurping-the-role-of-the-people-in-criminal-justice/813230/141 "2018-08-16T03:09:44Z")

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> [@Airbeck](#):
>
> If a prosecutor feels that they will have a difficult time proving their case and there is a significant chance the defendant will be acquitted at trial, but he/she can get the defendant to agree to a plea deal for 10% of the maximum sentence, isn’t that better then them going to trial and potentially getting 0% of the sentence?

Only if the prosecutor only objective is to have as many people as possible getting as harsh a sentence as possible.

If the prosecutor himself thinks that his case is so bad that a conviction is very unlikely, he shouldn’t be trying to see how he could at least get some amount of sentencing. He should drop the case.

“Better” in a justice system isn’t determined by how many years in jail it can produce in a year. Better would be to not implement policies that provide a perverse incentive for innocents to accept punishment and offer to guilty parties the opportunity to get away with a very light sentence.

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