[jakelazaroff]

You are the breadwinner for your household. A detective decides that you are the most likely person to have committed a nearby burglary. You have an alibi, but they charge you anyway. You cannot afford to pay bail; your options are to remain in jail until the case makes its way through the courts, or to accept a plea bargain that lets you out on probation. Your underfunded and overworked public defender advises you to take the deal, since a trial would be ruinous even if you do prevail. What do you do?

The issue with plea bargains is not that guilty people are given leniency for remorse; it is that they are used to coerce innocent people into confessing to a crime they did not commit.

[dijit]

So, back to the thread at hand: to your mind is this more often than when the law is working properly or less?

because it has been claimed in this subthread that the law is applied unjustly nearly 100% of the time.

[jakelazaroff]

I don't see any such claim, but the idea that prosecutors correctly identify the perpetrator in 98% of cases is obviously pure fantasy.

[magicalist]

The objection seems to be to your claim without caveat that plea bargains are meaningfully "due process".