The gravest inefficiency of plea bargaining and the consequences for rehabilitation and reintegration

Abstract

This article shows how supposedly efficient plea bargaining can obstruct and militate against the prospect of offender rehabilitation and reintegration (R&R). This argument is made by bridging the scholarly gap between the ‘legal’ work of plea bargaining and the ‘corrections’ work of R&R, which requires engaging with offenders and not simply doing things to them. The argument is rooted in the current literatures and supported by a case study that illustrates the mechanisms through which offenders’ subjective experiences of plea bargaining can alienate them from their own cases and deny a sense of participation and humanization. Consequently, the article shows how offenders can come to resent what is done to them, how they are disempowered, and that, in such circumstances, the prospects of working with offenders for R&R are reduced. Given that reoffending costs billions of pounds annually, if plea bargaining hinders R&R, then this is potentially its gravest inefficiency.