Vote for Implementing Plea Bargaining Justly - Link Below

Each year HiiL, a research and development institute for the justice sector, holds the Innovating Justice Awards. According to their website, "The Innovating Justice Awards are designed to stimulate innovations in the justice sector. Rule of Law professionals can identify the most promising developments in the field. Innovators are motivated to improve and to apply their innovations across borders. Nominees and applicants will be able to share their setbacks, successes and best practices." This year, my innovative idea entitled "Implementing Plea Bargaining Justly" has been nominated for most innovative idea. The introductory paragraph of the innovation is reprinted below.

Plea bargaining has become a globalised phenomenon due to growing numbers of prosecutions and constrained judicial budgets. Each year, new countries explore the implementation of plea bargaining as a remedy for their burdened criminal justice systems. Unfortunately, plea bargaining is currently being implemented without adequate reflection regarding lessons learned from the past. The challenge is to collect such lessons learned and disseminate this information to legislatures and judiciaries for consideration as they address plea bargaining reform or undertake the initial implementation of plea bargaining. The idea described here is to gather lessons learned from various countries that have adopted or experimented with plea bargaining so others might benefit from their missteps and successes. This will be achieved in two ways. First, an online clearing house will collect stories of plea bargaining from all actors in the system, including judges, prosecutors, defendants and victims. This will allow for the cataloguing of a diverse group of narratives regarding the successes and failures of plea bargaining around the world. Second, actors in the plea bargaining system from various countries will be interviewed to learn more about particular plea bargaining systems. Once all of the information and lessons learned has been gathered, the results will become part of a best practices guide, which will be disseminated to legislatures and judiciaries around the world to assist in ensuring that the efficiencies of plea bargaining are gained by those systems in need without sacrificing societal responsibilities or individual rights and liberties.

To support the effort at plea bargaining reform, please click the below link and vote for this initiative.

Click here to view the Innovating Justice Awards website, to see the entire "Implementing Plea Bargaining Justly" entry, and to vote for "Implementing Plea Bargaining Justly."  Please also pass this link along to others interested in the pursuit of just plea bargaining systems around the world.