The economic analysis of guilty plea: application to the French procedure of appearance on preliminary recognition of guilt.

Summary In 2004, within the framework of the law of March 9 adapting to changes in crime, the Preliminary Recognition of Guilt Procedure (CRPC) was introduced. The aim of this system, which is quicker and less costly than a trial, is to relieve the congestion of criminal court hearings. Since it came into force, there has been some reluctance to apply this procedure because of the fear of seeing French justice slide towards abuses similar to those seen in the United States. Numerous questions have been raised concerning its effectiveness and fairness, recently renewed by the Léger Committee's proposal to extend its scope to crimes. In order to shed light on the debate about the potentially undesirable effects of the guilty plea, in general, and of the CRPC, in particular, the economic analysis of the guilty plea proposed in this thesis has two objectives. The first objective is to examine how effective the penalty imposed under the guilty plea may be in reducing miscarriages of justice and/or deterring offenders from committing an offense. An original synthesis of the literature is conducted with an emphasis on two aspects of guilty plea effectiveness: disclosure and crime deterrence. We thus highlight valuable lessons on the effectiveness of the CRPC in its current state of application as well as on its expected effects if its field of application is extended. In particular, the economic literature advocates maintaining a sentence close to the judgment, granting the prosecutor an adequate budget and introducing sentencing scales. It then challenges the principles of sentence reduction, cost saving and individualization of the sentence. The second objective of this thesis is to examine the fairness of guilty pleas. Indeed, although the reproach of unfairness has been frequently formulated in France and in the United States against this procedure, the economic literature has not, to date, studied this question. In order to provide answers to the legal debates, two distinct analyses are conducted. First, we examine the influence of the method of paying the lawyer on the sentence imposed on the defendant. We show that a two-tiered justice system is emerging insofar as the mode of remuneration affects the outcome of the dispute (plea of guilty or trial) and, moreover, the sentence imposed on the accused. Then, based on a sample collected by us, we discuss, with the help of an econometric study, the fairness of the CRPC. We show that the place of appearance plays a fundamental role in the type of sentence imposed on the accused.