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Justice and efficiency are both crucial themes in criminal justice. Judicial authorities can achieve the best allocation of justice resources by summary handling of simple criminal cases, which normally constitute the majority of criminal cases. This book represents an effort to understand the actual, on-the-ground behavior of China´s simplified criminal procedure, which is essentially a plea bargain system. In order to assess the performance of this system and make legislative recommendations, two sets of analysis are conducted in this book: (1) a comparison between cases processed in the simplified procedure and cases processed in the ordinary procedure, and (2) the perceptions and experiences of legal actors while performing simplified procedure. According to the quantitative analysis derived from the collected case data as well as the surveys on legal actors, there is plenty of room to optimize the mechanism of criminal procedure. In particular, the judicial authorities could speed up the pre-trial process and improve the assistance to defense counsel in simplified procedure for guilty plea cases.

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Li Bensen is Professor and Doctoral Supervisor in the Procedural Law Research Institute at China University of Politics and Law. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Judicial Sciences from Maurer School of Law at Indiana University Bloomington and from the Law School at Renmin University of China. His research focuses on criminal procedural law.

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