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<p>Recent scholarship on plea bargaining has long debated whether lenient sentencing for defendants who plead guilty should be interpreted as “plea discounts”—rooted in reduced culpability and procedural efficiency—or as “trial penalties” driven by the shadow of the trial perspective. China’s formalized plea-leniency system, introduced by the 2018 Criminal Procedure Law, presents a novel context for testing these theories. Analyzing a large dataset of DUI (driving under the influence) cases from 2016 to 2021, this study finds no marked shift in overall sentencing severity after the law’s enactment. Yet case-level comparisons show that defendants who plead guilty receive lighter sentences, whereas those who reject pleas face harsher outcomes. These offsetting effects produce minimal net change, underscoring the system’s nuanced balance between incentivizing guilty pleas and penalizing trials in contemporary Chinese criminal justice.</p>

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Plea Discounts or Trial Penalties? An Empirical Analysis of China’s Plea-Leniency System and Its Impact on Sentencing

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年9月26日

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  • Su Jiang,
  • Yuhao Wu

摘要

Recent scholarship on plea bargaining has long debated whether lenient sentencing for defendants who plead guilty should be interpreted as “plea discounts”—rooted in reduced culpability and procedural efficiency—or as “trial penalties” driven by the shadow of the trial perspective. China’s formalized plea-leniency system, introduced by the 2018 Criminal Procedure Law, presents a novel context for testing these theories. Analyzing a large dataset of DUI (driving under the influence) cases from 2016 to 2021, this study finds no marked shift in overall sentencing severity after the law’s enactment. Yet case-level comparisons show that defendants who plead guilty receive lighter sentences, whereas those who reject pleas face harsher outcomes. These offsetting effects produce minimal net change, underscoring the system’s nuanced balance between incentivizing guilty pleas and penalizing trials in contemporary Chinese criminal justice.