Plea Bargaining in US drug cases

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Human Rights Watch just released a report on US sentencing practices for drug offenders, with the telling title "An Offer You Can't Refuse".
http://www.hrw.org/embargo/node/120896? ... c49&suid=6

Some key findings:

- The number of individuals in prison for Federal drug offenses has seen a massive increase



- 97 percent of US Federal drug convictions are due to guilty pleas, not trials



- The trial ratio has been steadily decreasing



- Trial sentences are - on average - 3 times longer than plea sentences:



- Furthermore, here is a breakdown of sentences by drug type



A few other conclusions that may come as little or no surprise (and which likely explain most of the difference in sentence lengths between pleas and trials):

- Prosecutors are much more likely to ask for greater sentences due to prior convictions if the case goes to trial
- Prosecutors are more likely to ask for greater sentences because of simultaneous firearm possession if the case goes to trial
- Prosecutors are more likely to "stack" offenses if the case goes to trial
- Courts are more likely to impose mandatory minimum sentences if the case goes to trial (almost a Captain Obvious statement, but even mandatory minimums often contain exceptions)

Food for thought, perhaps.

^ America's war on drugs sure has led to lots of prisoners of war.

Are the numbers similar in other countries?

Some countries hand out death sentences, over which prosecutors must be licking their chops.

Well, In my native country of Denmark, the maximum sentence for drug crimes (like dealing with large quantities of very hard drugs like heroin) is 16 years... Which is same as the average trial sentence in the US. And we have no data on the length of on plea bargaining sentences in Denmark... as plea bargaining is prohibited in Denmark.


Many of those countries hand out death sentences for a lot of stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_pu ... rafficking

Interesting tidbit, BTW. The US is on that list... due to this:

"18 USC § 3591 - Sentence of death"

(b) A defendant who has been found guilty of
(1) an offense referred to in section 408(c)(1) of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 848 (c)(1)), committed as part of a continuing criminal enterprise offense under the conditions described in subsection (b) of that section which involved not less than twice the quantity of controlled substance described in subsection (b)(2)(A) or twice the gross receipts described in subsection (b)(2)(B); or
(2) an offense referred to in section 408(c)(1) of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 848 (c)(1)), committed as part of a continuing criminal enterprise offense under that section, where the defendant is a principal administrator, organizer, or leader of such an enterprise, and the defendant, in order to obstruct the investigation or prosecution of the enterprise or an offense involved in the enterprise, attempts to kill or knowingly directs, advises, authorizes, or assists another to attempt to kill any public officer, juror, witness, or members of the family or household of such a person,

shall be sentenced to death if, after consideration of the factors set forth in section 3592 in the course of a hearing held pursuant to section 3593, it is determined that imposition of a sentence of death is justified, except that no person may be sentenced to death who was less than 18 years of age at the time of the offense.

Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3591

So, the US can actually impose the death penalty in drug trafficking cases.

The U.S. is a f*****g evil country.

The state must be destroyed.

More facts ...
2012 U.S. Federal prison annual costs per year per inmate are ...

$19, 325 for minimum security per year,
$24, 200 for low security per year ,
$23, 772 for medium security per year , and
$33, 330 for high security per year.

Source, federal bureau of prisons, http://www.bop.gov/foia/fy12_per_capita_costs.pdf

=============================================================

As of 26 October 2013, offenses of prisoners in the U.S. federal prison system ...

Drug Offenses: 100,114 (50.1 %)
Weapons, Explosives, Arson: 30,723 (15.4 %)
Immigration: 21,841 (10.9 %)
Robbery: 7,678 (3.8 %)
Burglary, Larceny, Property Offenses: 7,668 (3.8 %)
Extortion, Fraud, Bribery: 10,810 (5.4 %)
Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses: 5,614 (2.8 %)
Miscellaneous: 1,562 (0.8 %)
Sex Offenses: 11,826 (5.9 %)
Banking and Insurance, Counterfeit, Embezzlement: 792 (0.4 %)
Courts or Corrections: 626 (0.3 %)
Continuing Criminal Enterprise: 477 (0.2 %)

Source, http://www.bop.gov/news/quick.jsp

Slight tangent; but does this figure refer to illegal immigrants? It seems a strange thing to lock someone up for being an illegal immigrant rather than simply deporting them from whence they came.

Aren't forced confessions unconstitutional? That's essentially what a plea bargain is, a violation of the 5th amendment.

Oh, wait, the bill of rights is suspended.
Well, and the authors of it forgot to put any provisions for violation into the thing.
As bush jr said, it's just a piece of paper.

Yes but it also can refer to smuggling/transporting/harboring of illegals too. I do wonder where these people come from, are they criminals that get another charged lumped on, were they caught wander thru the desert, being smuggled over in the back of a semi-truck? Hopefully it isn't just poor people living their lives.

Deportation and incarceration are both the wrong answers to the issue of illegal immigration. We can't afford to deport millions of people and imprisoning all of them isn't possible or moral.

What you're looking at is called "the tax", it's a national disgrace.

Eh, so a libertarian country would save at least half of the money currently spent on statist aggression...

If an illegal immigrant is charged with any crime in the US, they must first serve the sentence given to them by the court system before they are deported. It is not a very well designed system.

Way back when I was living in Virginia there was a big protest about an illegal who was sentenced to 12 years based on a large number of stacked charges. I don't remember what they all were, but he was initially arrested for driving without a license or insurance. I know they also threw in wreckless endangerment because of the speed he was travelling.

Another factor in the high numbers of illegal immigrant incarcerations:

It would seem strange, unless you were a private prison corporation that requires bodies to lock up in order to turn a profit, and have a well funded lobbying arm to steer lawmaking in order to insure a steady supply of incarcerees. There's a reason I draw the privatization line at prisons, the profit motive leads to some truly perverse incentives, in the fullest sense of the word.

It's seriously horrifying how many cases I've read about where people who had nothing to do with a crime confess to everything because the police promise them things they don't intend to provide/tell them the only way they'll be allowed to stop the interrogation is confess/their friends are testifying against them, even if they're not. It doesn't even matter if they got all the details wrong.

The lucky ones are exonerated by DNA evidence or further testimony, with no consequences at all to the detectives and prosecutor who conspired to get themselves a trophy rather than solve the case. So keep that in mind next time you hear that somebody has "confessed" to a crime.

For more on false confessions, this is a widely studied case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_jogger_case

Regarding the private prison industry, they're dreadful, and I'd like to see more naming and shaming of politicians who take their campaign money and put their interests above those of their constituents. Of course, felons often lose the right to vote, too...