One of the primary goals of this project was to find ways in which the court system could

operate more efficiently. Reading plea bargaining material from various perspectives gives a
good insight into how plea bargaining began. The review also shows the different areas that
plea bargaining was used for and shows how plea bargaining affected criminal justice
courtroom workgroups. The analysis covers articles and books which examine the
perspectives of the prosecutor, judge, public defender, police, and the defendant. Several of
the articles reviewed served as comparative material about plea bargaining procedures used
in the United States. In fact, as Baldwin & McConville and Felstiner have found, plea
bargaining occurs in other countries other than the United States. Although the practice may
have another name, plea bargaining nonetheless occurs.

One of the major problems faced by social scientists in studying criminal behavior involved
obtaining samples of offenders to be used as units of research. Ordinarily, such samples are
drawn from those who have already been convicted and who are or have been previously
incarcerated. Such samples usually arise because it is difficult to study those who have not
yet been caught, charged, and convicted.

Newman's article discusses plea bargaining as a gross misuse of justice which is used by
criminals, political officials, and the business elite to avoid a conviction. In his study, Newman
interviewed a sample of men who were all convicted of "conventional" felonies in one court
district in regard to the process involved in their own convictions. These 97 men came from
a "medium" size county where felony convictions would normally follow a quasi-automatic
"combat" theory of criminal

justice involving a jury trial or at least an unconditional plea of guilty. In studying these
convictions, 93.8 percent were not convictions in a combative, trial-by-jury sense, but
merely involved sentencing after a plea of guilty had been entered. It is important to note
that 38.1 percent of the men had originally entered a not guilty plea, changing to guilty only
at a later procedural stage of an actual trial.

According to Mather, criminal law in the early nineteenth century was based on the
penology of Beccaria, Bentham, and other utilitarian philosophers. Because the primary goal
of punishment was deterrence, sentences were to be determined according to the offense
rather than the offender. By the end of the century, a "new penology" had emerged, based on
a philosophy of individualized sanctions that sought to reform {later rehabilitate) the offender.
In an effort to make the punishment fit the individual, a variety of new procedures were
introduced, such as "determinate" sentences, prison classification systems,

juvenile courts, different penalties for youthful offenders, and presentence investigations
(Vasoli, 1965). Parole and probation also developed during this period.