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32 Crim. L.Q. 85 (1989-1990)
Public Attitudes to Plea Bargaining

handle is hein.journals/clwqrty32 and id is 105 raw text is: Public Attitudes to Plea Bargaining Stanley A. Cohen* and Anthony N. Doobt In a 1975 working paper on Control of the Process1 the Law Reform Commission of Canada strongly condemned the practice popularly known as plea bargaining. The Commission was not convinced by the then-prevalent arguments that plea bargaining was an administrative necessity. Referring to the scarcity and inconclusiveness of available evidence the Commission declared that:2 Even if the necessity of the practice were conclusively demon- strated, we would legitimize it as a part of the procedural law only with that reluctance that inevitably accompanies any sacrifice of principle to expediency. Plea bargaining may save time and money. We doubt that the saving is worth the cost. The inclusion of these statements in a working paper (as opposed to a Report to Parliament) indicates that they were the Commission's tentative, not its final, views on the subject. Much has occurred in the intervening years to merit a reconsideration of those views. Perhaps the two most significant developments have been the increased availability of legal aid to persons accused of serious crime and the advent of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.3 These two phenomena have resulted in an enhanced capacity in the system to provide legal representation to accused persons and this in turn has alleviated some of the potential dangers posed by the plea bargaining process. Coincident with these events has been the development and formalization in some locations of the pre-trial conference, a process explicitly designed to promote the early resolution of disputes in criminal matters.4 In essence what has transpired, and * Co-ordinator, Criminal Procedure Project, Law Reform Commission of Canada. t Professor, Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto. I Criminal Procedure: Control of the Process, Working Paper No. 15 (1975). 2 Ibid., at p. 48. 3 Note especially s. 10(b) guaranteeing the right of an arrested or detained person to retain and instruct counsel without delay and to be informed of that right. 4 The aim of the pre-trial conference is to ensure that the parties are adequately informed about the nature of the case and the areas of disagreement that separate them.

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