<p>This study examines the determinants of guilty pleas through plea bargaining in Ecuador, drawing on data from the 2022 Penitentiary Census and employing a Probit regression model for 25,506 sentenced individuals. The analysis provides one of the first large-scale quantitative assessments of plea bargaining in a Latin American context where this mechanism was only recently introduced. Results reveal that institutional and structural factors—particularly the type of offense, type of legal counsel, and ethnicity—are the strongest predictors of defendants’ decisions to plead guilty. Defendants represented by public defenders are significantly more likely to accept plea agreements, while serious offenses such as homicide and rape are markedly less likely to be resolved through plea bargaining. Indigenous defendants exhibit a higher probability of pleading guilty compared to mestizos, suggesting unequal access to justice across social groups. Gender and economic vulnerability also shape plea decisions, although their effects are comparatively smaller. Together, these findings indicate that plea bargaining in Ecuador operates within a framework of procedural efficiency shaped by underlying inequalities in representation and social position. The study contributes new empirical evidence on the early operation of plea bargaining in developing legal systems and underscores the need for future research on defense quality, prosecutorial discretion, and defendants’ perceptions of fairness.</p>