Structural and Cultural Sources of Variation in Guilty Plea Rates: A Study of Illinois Circuit Courts

Guilty pleas account for 90% of all felony case convictions in the United States. Guilty pleas result from one of two decision-making procedures. First, defendants may decide to plead guilty outright. Such "explicit" pleas account for the vast majority of these submissions. Second, they may result from "plea bargaining", a procedure where defendants forego the opportunity to contest their legal guilt at trial and submit pleas of "guilty" in exchange for reduced charges and/or sentences from the court. Yet "guilty plea rates of felony case convictions" generally range from .65 to .98 annually across U.S. circuit courts, indicating that the average of .90 is not uniform across jurisdictions. Criminal justice theorists have researched the "causes" of this variation due to concern for whether defendants in court systems with relatively high guilty plea rates are being "coerced" into pleading guilty by attorneys wishing to avoid trials. Is an adequate determination of legal guilt provided is such systems? To answer this question, theory on the guilty plea process has focused on the context of courtroom decision-making while placing little emphasis on the importance of external (environmental) factors in shaping these decisions.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Sociology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Wooldredge, John David

• Sociology, Criminology and Penology

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8701659

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/71017