IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bir/birmec/10-28.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Re-election Concerns and the Failure of Plea Bargaining

Author

Listed:
  • Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay
  • Bryan C McCannon

Abstract

A new explanation for the failure of plea bargaining is provided. It is shown that a retention agent (i.e. median voter) can use convictions at trial as a signal of the quality of a prosecutor. This encourages a public prosecutor to take cases to trial even when both social welfare and her utility (absent the retention motivatiOn) from plea bargaining is higher.

Suggested Citation

  • Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Bryan C McCannon, 2010. "Re-election Concerns and the Failure of Plea Bargaining," Discussion Papers 10-28, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    • Handle: RePEc:bir:birmec:10-28
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.cal.bham.ac.uk/pdf/10-28.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucian Arye Bebchuk, 1984. "Litigation and Settlement under Imperfect Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(3), pages 404-415, Autumn.
    2. Philippe Delacote & Lydie Ancelot, 2009. "Prosecutor and lawyers in plea bargaining with complete information," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(3), pages 1925-1932.
    3. Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Bryan McCannon, 2014. "The effect of the election of prosecutors on criminal trials," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 161(1), pages 141-156, October.
    4. Baker, Scott & Mezzetti, Claudio, 2001. "Prosecutorial Resources, Plea Bargaining, and the Decision to Go to Trial," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(1), pages 149-167, April.
    5. Reinganum, Jennifer F, 1988. "Plea Bargaining and Prosecutorial Discretion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 713-728, September.
    6. Kobayashi, Bruce H. & Lott, John Jr., 1992. "Low-probability-high-penalty enforcement strategies and the efficient operation of the plea-bargaining system," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 69-77, March.
    7. Boari, Nicola & Fiorentini, Gianluca, 2001. "An economic analysis of plea bargaining: the incentives of the parties in a mixed penal system," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 213-231, June.
    8. Eric Rasmusen & Manu Raghav & Mark Ramseyer, 2009. "Convictions versus Conviction Rates: The Prosecutor's Choice," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 11(1), pages 47-78.
    9. Stanley, Linda R & Coursey, Don L, 1990. "Empirical Evidence on the Selection Hypothesis and the Decision to Litigate or Settle," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(1), pages 145-172, January.
    10. William M. Landes, 1974. "An Economic Analysis of the Courts," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 164-214, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Franzoni, Luigi Alberto, 1999. "Negotiated Enforcement and Credible Deterrence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(458), pages 509-535, October.
    12. George L. Priest & Benjamin Klein, 1984. "The Selection of Disputes for Litigation," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(1), pages 1-56, January.
    13. Bjerk, David, 2008. "On the role of plea bargaining and the distribution of sentences in the absence of judicial system frictions," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 1-7, March.
    14. Grossman, Gene M & Katz, Michael L, 1983. "Plea Bargaining and Social Welfare," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(4), pages 749-757, September.
    15. David Bjerk, 2007. "Guilt Shall Not Escape or Innocence Suffer? The Limits of Plea Bargaining When Defendant Guilt is Uncertain," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 9(2), pages 305-329.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Bryan C McCannon, 2014. "Queuing Up For Justice: Elections and Case Backlogs," Discussion Papers 14-10, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. SIDDHARTHA BANDYOPADHYAY & BRYAN C. McCANNON, 2015. "Prosecutorial Retention: Signaling by Trial," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 17(2), pages 219-256, April.
    2. Christmann, Robin, 2018. "Prosecution and Conviction under Hindsight Bias in Adversary Legal Systems," MPRA Paper 84870, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Andrew F. Daughety & Reinganum F. Reinganum, 2014. "Settlement and Trial: Selected Analyses of the Bargaining Environment," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 14-00005, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    4. Alexander Lundberg, 2024. "Do prosecutors induce the innocent to plead guilty?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(2), pages 650-674, April.
    5. Mongrain, Steeve & Roberts, Joanne, 2009. "Plea bargaining with budgetary constraints," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 8-12, March.
    6. Bryan C. McCannon & Joylynn Pruitt, 2018. "Taking on the boss: Informative contests in prosecutor elections," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 20(5), pages 657-671, October.
    7. Jeong-Yoo Kim, 2010. "Credible plea bargaining," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 279-293, June.
    8. Bryan C. McCannon, 2024. "Alaska's ban on sentence bargaining," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(1), pages 110-119, January.
    9. Brishti Guha, 2024. "Plea bargaining when juror effort is costly," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 78(3), pages 945-977, November.
    10. Andrew F. Daughety & Jennifer F. Reinganum, 2016. "Selecting among Acquitted Defendants: Procedural Choice versus Selective Compensation," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 172(1), pages 113-133, March.
    11. David Bjerk, 2021. "Socially Optimal Plea Bargaining With Costly Trials And Bayesian Juries," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(1), pages 263-279, January.
    12. Sylvain Bourjade & Patrick Rey & Paul Seabright, 2009. "Private Antitrust Enforcement In The Presence Of Pre‐Trial Bargaining," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(3), pages 372-409, September.
    13. Yacov Tsur, 2017. "Bounding reasonable doubt: implications for plea bargaining," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 197-216, October.
    14. Moti Michaeli & Yosef Zohar, 2023. "The vanishing trial: a dynamic model with adaptive agents," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 196(3), pages 277-298, September.
    15. SangMok Lee, 2014. "Plea bargaining: on the selection of jury trials," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 57(1), pages 59-88, September.
    16. Robin Christmann, 2023. "Plea bargaining and investigation effort: inquisitorial criminal procedure as a three-player game," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 497-532, December.
    17. Luke Garrod & Bruce Lyons, 2016. "Early Settlement in European Merger Control," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(1), pages 27-63, March.
    18. Kobayashi, Bruce H. & Lott, John Jr., 1996. "In defense of criminal defense expenditures and plea bargaining," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 397-416, December.
    19. Bjerk, David, 2008. "On the role of plea bargaining and the distribution of sentences in the absence of judicial system frictions," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 1-7, March.
    20. Schwarz Mordechai E., 2012. "Subgame Perfect Plea Bargaining in Biform Judicial Contests," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 297-330, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    plea bargaining; prosecutor evaluation; signaling;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bir:birmec:10-28. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oleksandr Talavera (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/debhauk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.