From Guilty Pleas To Negotiated Justice: A Global History Of Plea Bargaining And India’S Turn (2006 - 2023)

Abstract

Plea bargaining is a negotiated resolution of a criminal case in which the accused accepts responsibility under court supervision in exchange for a calibrated outcome. Unlike compounding or summary disposal, it results in a conviction and integrates victim participation and voluntariness checks. This paper examines how plea bargaining evolved globally and how India has adapted the idea to its own institutional needs. It first reconstructs the emergence of negotiated pleas in the United States and their constitutional settlement, then surveys common-law and civil-law variants that emphasise judicial oversight, open-court recording, and victim remedies. Against this backdrop, the paper traces India’s pathway from limited guilty-plea shortcuts and compounding to full codification in the Code of Criminal Procedure (2006) and re-codification in the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (2023). The analysis distinguishes plea bargaining from compounding and summary mechanisms and explicates BNSS features such as the thirty-day filing window and calibrated relief for first-time offenders. Using a doctrinal and comparative method, the paper evaluates four design levers eligibility limits, voluntariness checks, sentencing transparency, and enforceable compensation and proposes an implementation agenda. Core recommendations include data-led eligibility and public dashboards, “bail-before-plea” sequencing to reduce custody-driven coercion, minimum defence standards prior to any negotiation, indicative sentencing bands with brief reasons, and escrow-based compensation with monitored restorative terms. The paper argues that if these operational safeguards are embedded, negotiated justice can reduce pendency and undertrial incarceration while strengthening fairness, dignity, and public trust, for victims, defendants, and the courts alike.