Comments on the History of Plea Bargaining

Abstract

Criminal law in the early nineteenth century was based on the of Beccaria, Bentham, and other utilitarian philosophers. Because the primary goal of punishment was deterrence, sentences were to be determined according to the offense rather than the offender. By the end of the century a penology had emerged, based on a philosophy of individualized sanctions that sought to reform (later to rehabilitate) the offender. In an effort to make the punishment fit the individual a variety of new procedures were introduced, such as indeterminate sentences, prison classification systems, juvenile courts, different penalties for youthful offenders, and presentence investigations (Vasoli, 1965:405). Parole and probation also developed during this period; the latter evolved from the common law practice of suspending sentence into a more formal program involving probation officers who made written reports to the court, and supervised the convict's compliance with the restrictive conditions of probation. For example, California's probation law, Penal Code ? 1203, although enacted in 1872, was substantially rewritten in 1903 to create probation in its more modern form. Between 1903 and 1923 the statute was amended eight times to refine probation as an alternative in sentencing. Not everyone accepted these penal reforms, however, and public reaction in the 1920s called for greater severity in sentencing. Roscoe Pound noted unhappily that before these penal innovations could fully be implemented and experts

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