PLEA BARGAINING AND THE RESEARCH DILEMMA

Plea bargaining has been traditionally assumed to play no part in the administration of criminal justice in England. Research conducted by the authors casts serious doubts on this assumption. Their report on this research provoked a vituperative response from leaders of the English legal profession who attempted to suppress its publication. Some implications of this reaction for the independent conduct of research are examined in this article.     

VALUE DILEMMAS IN LAW ENFORCEMENT: A Study of Administrative Decision Making in a Police Department

As agents of the state, the police work in dynamic, normatively ambiguous, and conflict-laden political environments. In these settings, various local partisan interests try to influence the police organization. As a result, technological, socio-cultural, and political forces may produce anomalous administrative decisions in police agencies. These forces are "stabilized" by the personal views of the decision makers. This article focuses on a specific case of administrative decision making that illuminates the uneven competition among different partisan actors who seek to influence police policies and practices.