Bounded rationality can be understood as the idea of making a decision which is considered rational but limited to the available information and the mental capabilities of those involved (Birke, 1999). In economic terms, people who are considered to be bounded rational are not the ones who optimize their happiness by every decision they make, rather, bounded rational people are seen as the satisfiers or people who opt to satisfy their wants and needs without exhausting all the possible alternatives. A similar explanation can be given with regards to the criminal justice system. Satisfiers are considered to be people of diverse and unique preferences and tastes which change with time (Birke, 1999). Satisfiers are known for their inconsistencies with regards to decision making or predicting the impact of the choices they make. Often, they decide issues not because of their calculated self-reason but because of other reasons such as love, peer pressure, ethics, social norms, and fairness. Sometimes they make decisions on whims, paying little or no attention to the consequences.
The idea of bounded rationality highly affects the decisions of defendants when they consider pleading guilty. Some of these defendants do not have full information about some of the choices they make. The efforts they need to put to acquire more information for them is usually not worth the struggle. Some of them lack the basic knowledge of what they exactly want or what makes them happy. The defendants with bounded rationality are normally only concerned about themselves in relation to other people. Their decision-making process is complex incorporating many variables (Redlich, Bibas, Edkins & Madon, 2017). Their decisions are highly influenced by the situation in which they find themselves and other people. All these factors make it difficult to make definite claims about such defendants will do in a given circumstance.
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An alarming majority of criminal defendants end up pleading guilty providing the trials with an exception in courts. The explanation which can be given to the rising rates of the guilty pleas is the fact that the criminal defendants and the prosecution are not provided with judicial resources which are needed to try the criminal cases (Redlich, Bibas, Edkins & Madon, 2017). Because of the huge disparity between the capacity of the court systems and the demands put on it, some of the prosecutors push the defendants to plead guilty by providing them discounts such as reduced charges and recommendations which are binding and non-binding. Defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges often express the will to support resolutions which can be reached without going through the struggling of trials.
Lastly, plea bargaining system largely favors the defendants who plead guilty and waive their rights to fair trials over those who do not. Lawyers who support plea bargaining reflect the system as beneficial to the defendants who exchange their rights to fair trials with their guilty pleas (Dripps, 2015). Advocates who oppose the practice argue that it corrupts the justice system by extracting the trial penalty from the defendants who are willing to undertake their fair trial rights and push the innocent defendants to plead guilty. Whether or not the sentences after the pleas are considered as discounts or inflation, a separate consideration is what influences the discrepancy existing between the two. In other words, as long as the prosecutor expresses the will to discount the prices of pleas whether or not the defendants are guilty or not, pleading guilty is a dominant strategy for the defendant (Dripps, 2015). It is important to note that some of the defendants with bounded rationality are not particularly troubled by pleading guilty even if they are innocent. Some of them argue that the idea of innocence is not unique to plea bargaining but instead a consequence of any kind of imperfect trial.
References
Birke, R. (1999). Reconciling loss aversion and guilty pleas. Utah L. Rev. , 205.
Dripps, D. A. (2015). Guilt, innocence, and due process of plea bargaining. Wm. & Mary L. Rev. , 57 , 1343.
Redlich, A. D., Bibas, S., Edkins, V. A., & Madon, S. (2017). The psychology of defendant plea decision making. American Psychologist , 72 (4), 339.
