PBI Academic Working Group Co-Chairs Appointed

One of the core methods through which the Plea Bargaining Institute advances its mission of creating a global intellectual home for the sharing of knowledge and the promotion of collaboration is through the establishment of working groups for academics, practitioners, advocacy organizations, and the international plea community. Today, the Institute announces the formal creation of the first working group – the Academic Working Group.

The Academic Working Group will create a space in which academics from various disciplines will network and collaborate regarding plea bargaining research. The group will also collaborate with other PBI working groups, such as the practitioner and advocacy organization working groups, to ensure that research is being utilized to inform litigation and policy making. Further, these collaborations will help to ensure that researchers are addressing the pressing questions posed by practitioners and advocacy organizations regarding the operation and impact of the plea bargaining system. The Academic Working Group will also explore ways to increase the amount of plea bargaining research being undertaken and seek to promote specific research inquiries that will bring greater insights to the global plea bargaining conversation.

“We are excited to get this working group up and running,” said PBI Founding Director Lucian Dervan. “Using academic research to inform decision-making is core to the PBI mission. It is also vital that academics have the opportunity to interact with practitioners and policy makers to both better understand the operation of the plea bargaining system and identify areas in need of deeper inquiry and research. Through its various collaborative functions, the Academic Working Group will be a global driver of plea bargaining research, information dissemination, and informed policy development.”

PBI Advisory Board Member Dr. Allison Redlich of George Mason University said of the launch, “A forum such as PBI’s Academic Working Group to unite guilty plea researchers from disciplines that typically work in silos is long overdue. I am thrilled about the formation of this group and look forward to seeing the fruits of its labors. With the sustained efforts by the PBI and its subgroups, we will be armed with the evidence needed to ensure justice is being served.”

Remarks and biographical information on the newly appointed PBI Academic Working Group chairs are available below.

Dr. Rebecca K. Helm

Professor of Law and Empirical Legal Studies

University of Exeter

Director of University of Exeter Evidence-Based Justice Lab

“I am delighted to have the opportunity to co-chair the PBI Academic Working Group and to play a part in helping to improve the translation of guilty plea research into more effective and fair legal policy.”

Rebecca Helm is a Professor of Law and Empirical Legal Studies and Director of the Evidence Based Justice Lab (EBJL) at the University of Exeter Law School, and a current UK Research and Innovation Fellow. Her work combines rigorous empirical research grounded in behavioral science with more traditional legal research to promote the effective translation of scientific work into legal policy and practice. In her capacity as EBJL director she has established and maintains the UK Miscarriages of Justice Registry, a searchable online database categorizing and providing information in relation to hundreds of miscarriages of justice across the three UK jurisdictions. She has been researching guilty pleas and the cognitive mechanisms underlying guilty plea decision-making for the last ten years, and her work on guilty plea decision-making in England and Wales was influential in the UK government’s recent decision to overturn all convictions related to the Post Office Horizon Scandal.

Dr. Miko M. Wilford 

Associate Professor 

Department of Psychology 

Iowa State University

“I look forward to facilitating and participating in the interdisciplinary collaborations needed to improve our understanding of guilty pleas, and how procedures can be reformed to strengthen their validity.”

Dr. Miko M. Wilford is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Iowa State University, the Principal Investigator of the Psycho-Legal Experiments and Applications (P.L.E.A.) Lab, and the creator of the PleaJustice project. She was a recipient of the Saleem Shah Early Career Award from the American Psychology-Law Society in 2025 and has been recognized as a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science. She is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Psychonomic Society. In 2019, she was one of six psychological scientists awarded a CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation. In the 10+ years Dr. Wilford has investigated guilty pleas, her understanding of the area has grown immensely, and her studies regularly include collaborations with other researchers in psychology, as well as criminal justice and law.

Dr. Tina M. Zottoli

Associate Professor

Psychology, College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Montclair State University

“I am honored to serve as co-chair of the PBI Academic Working Group, which will cultivate cross-disciplinary research collaborations and facilitate empirically supported policy and practice reforms.”

Dr. Tina Zottoli is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Montclair State University and a licensed clinical psychologist in the state of New York. Her scholarship centers on decision making in legal contexts, with emphases on guilty plea decision making and the legal capacities of adolescent defendants. Her work on recidivism risk in persons released from life sentences for crimes committed as youth has garnered national attention and was used to support “second-look” legislation in several states. Dr. Zottoli is the director of the Legal Decision Making Lab at Montclair and she also maintains a small private practice in New York, providing consultation, forensic evaluation, and expert testimony across a range of criminal and civil contexts, including proved and suspected false admissions.