Events
Pursuant to the PBI mission to create opportunities for dialogue and collaboration, the institute convenes and participates in various events throughout the year. The focus of these events and the target audiences for these offerings vary, but each is designed to further the institute’s mission of sharing knowledge and creating opportunities for collaboration. The flagship event each year is the annual PBI Symposium.
Below you can find information about upcoming and previous events.
PBI convened its inaugural annual symposium on June 15th and 16th of 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee at Belmont University College of Law. The goal of the inaugural symposium was to share information about current developments in plea bargaining research, advocacy, and policy making. The event also sought to begin the work of creating networks of researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and advocacy organizations to create more opportunities for collaboration, including cross-disciplinary research. Finally, the symposium sought feedback from the participants regarding a number of issues in the plea bargaining field, including the identification of new areas of research and new issues for inquiry as the institute seeks to increase our understanding of plea bargaining and use this knowledge to positively impact reform efforts and policy developments.
You can learn more about the inaugural symposium by reviewing the symposium report on the PBI reports page.
PBI convened a symposium in collaboration with the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice. The event, entitled Plea Bargaining Policies, Reforms, and Research, occurred on April 4, 2025 at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The event began with an examination of plea bargaining reform that included insights from the Hon. Stephanos Bibas, Hon. John Gleeson, Paul Heaton of the Quattrone Center, and Nina Patel of the ACLU. The day also featured a panel discussion focusing on prosecution office plea bargaining policies. Consistent with the PBI mission to make research more accessible to policymakers, advocacy organizations, and practitioners, there were two research download sessions during which attendees heard from several researchers about their current studies and findings. Finally, attendees broke into small groups during lunch where they engaged in insightful conversations about plea bargaining, their work in the field, and the future of reform.
