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Plea Bargaining: The Nineteenth Century Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Mark H. Haller
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Abstract

Plea bargaining apparently arose independently in a number of urban criminal courts in the nineteenth century. These simultaneous developments were presumably related to a number of broad structural changes that characterized American criminal justice at the time. Chief among them were the creation of urban police departments for the arrest of criminals and the development of a prison system for punishment or rehabilitation. Other developments included the reduced role of the victim, the relative independence of criminal justice from legal norms, and the corruption and political manipulation of the criminal justice system. The paper explores ways that such developments may have provided the context for the institutionalization of plea bargaining as a method of case disposition.

Type
Historical Perspectives
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , Winter 1979 , pp. 273 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © 1979 Law and Society Association.

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