“Cops and Pleas: Police Officers’ Influence on Plea Bargaining”

The title of this post is the title of this intriguing new essay authored by Jonathan Abel appearing in the April issue of the Yale Law Journal. Here is its abstract:

Police officers play an important, though little-understood, role in plea bargaining.  This Essay examines the many ways in which prosecutors and police officers consult, collaborate, and clash with each other over plea bargaining.  Using original interviews with criminal justice officials from around the country, this Essay explores the mechanisms of police involvement in plea negotiations and the implications of this involvement for both plea bargaining and policing.  Ultimately, police influence in the arena of plea bargaining — long thought the exclusive domain of prosecutors — calls into question basic assumptions about who controls the prosecution team.