PBI Expands Online Summaries Database to Incorporate Academic Articles

Database Now Holds Over 130 Significant Academic Articles from 1979 Through 2023

The Plea Bargaining Institute has expanded the online summaries database to include over 130 academic articles. The articles represent important works from 1979 through 2023 in the fields of law, psychology, economics and other disciplines that assist in better understanding the history, growth, and operation of plea bargaining.

“The Institute’s mission includes creating better access to research for practitioners, policy makers, and academics in diverse fields of study,” said PBI Founding Director Lucian Dervan. “This new collection of online academic summaries will assist each of these groups in accessing and examining important research that will better inform their litigation, policy initiatives, and cross-disciplinary research.”

Each of the academic entries in the database contains the title, authors, source, and publication year of the article. This is followed by a list of terms relevant to the research piece, and these terms can be used to identify other research in the database relevant to the same subject matter. Finally, each summary contains a detailed description of the research’s main findings and conclusions and a key quote from the piece.

These new academic article entries supplement the fifty-nine Supreme Court summaries representing significant Supreme Court decisions regarding plea bargaining since 1970 already included in the online database. A report regarding those 59 Supreme Court decisions was released earlier this year by the Institute. A report regarding the academic articles will be released in the near future.

“This is a significant step forward in the creation of a space where those working in the plea bargaining field can review research and caselaw important to their work,” said Dervan. “Over time, we will continue to expand these summaries to fulfill our goal of being the global intellectual home for the sharing of knowledge about plea bargaining and for collaboration across disciplines. In fact, we are already working on a supplement to the academic summaries collection that will be posted in the spring with dozens more entries.”