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Showing posts from August, 2024

Notable Recent Publications, August 2024

  Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. If you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to Venita Embry at  vembry@rti.org .  Articles David Abrams, Viet Nguyen, AurĂ©lie Ouss, and Julia Reinhold, “A (Plea) Offer You Can Refuse” Plea bargaining is ubiquitous in the US justice system, yet lack of data on rejected plea offers limits analyses. Addressing this gap, we compile a dataset including all initial plea offers—accepted and rejected—from 23,000 felony cases in Philadelphia, enabling us to analyze the interplay between plea offers, defendant decisions, and case outcomes. Our analysis yields three significant insights. First, even after controlling for detailed case observables, initial plea offers are longer for Black defendants, especially for those in jail pretrial. Second, initial plea offers that are rejected tend to exceed eventu