About this item
Plea negotiation is rife with due process concerns, including a heightened risk of coerced pleas, ignoring mens rea, serious questions about assistance of counsel, limited discovery and little litigation of the evidence, the conviction of innocent defendants and significant questions about fairness and equity. Plea negotiation is also the fast track to criminal conviction, tough punishment, and mass incarceration. From the perspective of public policy, plea negotiation perpetuates a harm based, retribution focused system of crime and punishment. Because of the failures of public health, the justice system has become a dumping ground for hundreds of thousands of mentally ill, substance addicted and abusing, and neurocognitively impaired offenders. And because of a tough on crime mentality and lack of information and options, the justice system routinely prosecutes and punishes these offenders.
About the Author
William R. Kelly is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Criminology and Criminal Justice Research at the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught and conducted research in criminology and criminal justice for over twenty-five years and has published extensively on a variety of justice matters. Dr. Kelly has considerable experience developing, implementing and evaluating a wide variety of criminal justice programs and policies. His consulting work spans local, state and federal governments including law enforcement, probation departments, prisons and jails, state and federal prosecutors, judges, the defense bar, the court system, problem solving courts, and parole agencies, among others. He has provided expert advice and counsel on big picture justice policy issues as well as the design, implementation, operation and evaluation of very specific justice programs and initiatives.He has recently completed five books on criminal justice reform. These include Criminal Justice at the Crossroads (Columbia University Press, 2015) , The Future of Crime and Punishment: Smart Policies for Reducing Crime and Saving Money (Rpwman and Littlefield, 2016 and revised in 2019) , From Retribution to Public Safety (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) , Confronting Underground Justice (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) , and The Crisis in the American Criminal Courts, Rowman and Littlefield, 2021) .
