THE STATE OF PLEA BARGAINING IN ALASKA

In 1975, Alaska's Attorney General banned plea bargaining by prosecutors. The ban and a later evaluation of its impacts are frequently cited in the literature to support arguments that plea bargaining can be abolished with little effect on the efficient functioning of the court system. These conclusions, though, are inaccurate. Plea bargaining did not disappear in Alaska following the ban and plea bargaining is alive and well now. The research design used to assess the impact of the ban was flawed; the causal inferences drawn by the authors of the evaluation study are unpersuasive and invalid Also, substantial changes in legal guidelines and case law have occurred in Alaska since 1980. The literature on plea bargaining, hence, needs to be more careful in checking the conclusions it accepts as valid and it needs to keep abreast of changes which affect generalizations about plea bargaining derived from the Alaska experience.