Who Minds Their Pleas and Queues? Quick and Slow Misdemeanor Pleas Pose Similar Risk of Incarceration

Millions of people in the United States are convicted of misdemeanor crimes annually, yet we know little about the processes generating these convictions. The current research used 87,248 misdemeanor cases from an urban Florida county to examine predictors and punishments for quick plea dispositions—pleas entered at defendants’ first court appearance. Results indicate that the 47% of defendants who pleaded quickly were more likely to receive a non-carceral sentence and less likely to receive time-served only than those who pleaded later, but the probability of further jail time was essentially equal. In contrast, defendants convicted at trial faced a nearly threefold increase in the likelihood of jail time. These findings suggest that the process may be sufficiently onerous to induce quick pleas in misdemeanor cases, even when direct sentence benefits are unclear. The prevalence of quick pleas also indicates that the “bargaining” in plea bargaining could be overstated for misdemeanors.