Plea bargaining does not occur in a vacuum. There are several actors (e.g., prosecutors, defense attorneys, defendants) directly involved with plea negotiations and plea decisions. As approximately 95 percent of state and federal convictions result from guilty pleas, the decision-making process that defendants and other actors undergo during plea negotiations is important to understand. This chapter will address the unique and overlapping theoretical, practical, cognitive, and social influence factors that underlie the plea negotiation process and ultimate plea decision. Specifically, this chapter will focus on negotiations – particularly how attorneys approach negotiation ideologically and practically – and the power dynamics present when two or more actors attempt to influence each other. Furthermore, we will discuss the basic social (e.g., obedience to authority) and cognitive (e.g., heuristics) processes that drive defendant decision-making when interacting with prosecutors and defense attorneys. Finally, policy implications and future directions for research will be discussed throughout the chapter.

Chapters 1 and 2 looked at how the official discourse is based on tactical defendants ‘playing the system’ and the justification for sentence discounts corresponding to the timing of guilty pleas is utilitarian benefits to the criminal justice system. This chapter offers an alternative perspective. First it argues that sentence discount for guilty pleas is a form of implicit plea bargaining despite the avoidance to officially recognise the practice of plea bargaining in different jurisdictions. Moreover, operating in tandem with advanced sentence indications and other stages of the criminal process, sentence discounts for guilty pleas arguably serve as pressure for defendants to plead guilty.