Reflexions on plea bargaining equity: application to the French process

Faced with criticisms of slowness and complexity addressed to the legal system, plea bargaining was set up in order to decongest courts gradually. Today, more than 90% of criminal cases are solved through plea bargaining in the United States. Beyond speed requirement, justice must also answer others objectives and particularly equity. For this instance, only one econometric analysis studies the equity of the American plea bargaining (Fazio, Stephen and Tata [2008]). In Europe, similar process as plea bargaining were recently applied (Italy, Germany, France). Since 2004, plea bargaining was introduced into the French penal system, causing, as in the United States, many debates. It was in particular compared to a two-speed legal system: one legal system for rich who have financial resources to pay their attorney and one other justice for poor. So, the financial constraint may operate as a gap on representation. This paper aims to discuss, by an econometric analysis, the equity of French plea bargaining. We use personal data from three French court of instance and we carry out in this paper a Logit model in order to examine the criticism of inequity addressed to plea bargaining. We find that the court where the defendant is convicted has a significant role. Nevertheless, no difference on criminal sentences appears according to the type of attorneys (public attorneys or private attorneys) and according to the wealth of the defendant (benefit or not on legal aids)