On the shortcomings of the plea agreement

Abstract

The plea agreement is an institute of criminal procedure law that was introduced into the Criminal Procedure Code in 2011 as one of three agreements that can be concluded by the public prosecutor and the defendant. The author points out the shortcomings of the agreement in terms of the absence of a prescribed penalty as a condition for concluding an agreement, determining the sentence without presenting evidence, with an emphasis on extenuating and aggravating circumstances, and provides suggestions on how to prevent or eliminate problems that could occur in praxis by applying valid legal solutions. In order to obtain answers to some of the above questions, a research questionnaire was created on the basis of which the author collected data from a court and public prosecutor's office in order to prove the presented hypotheses. From the methodological aspect, in addition to documentary analysis, the comparative and historical method, prediction strategy and the medium-scale method were used for the purpose of the research.