Asher Flynn

Arie Freiberg

This book explores victims’ views of plea negotiations and the level of input that they desire. It draws on the empirical findings of the first in-depth study of victims and plea negotiations conducted in Australia. Over the last 50 years, the criminal justice system has seen major changes in both the role that victims play in the justice process and in how the vast majority of criminal cases are finalised. Guilty pleas have become the norm, and many of these result from negotiations between the prosecutor and the defence. The extent to which the victim is one of the participating parties in plea negotiations however, is a question of law and of practice. Drawing from focus groups and surveys with victims of crime, Victims and Plea Negotiations seeks to privilege victims’ voices and lived experiences of plea negotiations, to present their perspectives on five options for enhanced participation in this legal process. This book appeals to academics and students in the areas of law, criminology, sociology, victimology and legal studies, those who practice in the criminal justice system generally, those who work with victims, and policy makers.

Overlooked and Unimpressed

Victims and Plea Negotiations

Despite a popular view that trials are the focal point of the criminal justice process, in reality, the most frequent way a criminal matter resolves is not through a fiercely fought battle between state and defendant, but instead through a process of negotiation between the prosecution and defence, resulting in a defendant pleading guilty in exchange for agreed concessions from the prosecution. This book presents an original empirical case-study of plea negotiations drawing upon interviews with legal actors and an analysis of defence practitioner case files, to shine light on the processes and ways in which an agreed outcome is reached in criminal prosecutions, within the setting of a jurisdiction, like many others world-wide, which is suffering major shifts in state resources. Plea negotiations, also referred to as “plea bargaining”, “negotiated guilty pleas” and “negotiated resolutions” are neither an alloyed benefit nor a detriment for defendants, victims or the criminal justice system generally, and like all compromises, this book shows how the perfect “justice” outcome gives way to the good, or just the reasonably acceptable justice outcome.

Pragmatic Justice in an Imperfect World

Plea Negotiations

Good policy is all very well but it is meaningless without good execution. The Tools of Regulation focuses on execution: what processes and tools are available to government regulators to achieve regulatory outcomes? Six broad approaches are adopted to analyse and classify regulatory tools: economic, transactional, authorisational, structural, informational and legal. These tools not only include the traditional 'command and control' statutory methods, but also taxes and charges, subsidies, licences, accreditations, contracts, grants and information campaigns as forms of regulation. Regulation, under this conception, is not just about enforcement but about the prosaic, day-to-day factors that operate to influence behaviour and produce regulatory outcomes. These factors form the 'webs of influence' that operate at different times and in different contexts to produce 'normal' behaviour. These influences include market forces, social norms, ethics, codes of conduct and practice, guidelines, standards, business processes and technological constraints. Regulation is as much about regularity as it is about deviance. For a busy practitioner, regulator or regulatee or novice scholar the theoretical literature can be challenging and obscure. This book provides them with a practical, simple and accessible guide to modern regulation in whatever field of regulation they are interested.

Arie Freiberg

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