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When Law and Practice Collide: the Implementation of the Plea-Bargaining Process in Malaysia

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Abstract

The amendment of the Malaysian Criminal Procedure Code in 2010 formalised the plea-bargaining process and introduced two new sections, 172C and 172D. The new procedures are intended to reduce the backlog of cases in the criminal courts and as a swift alternative to a full criminal trial. However, the law in action does not appear to be in line with the law in the statute book because currently the actors involved in the process are avoiding the use of the new procedural law. Instead, those actors are following the old informal practice of plea-bargaining to achieve their personal goals which may be inconsistent with the organisational goals of the judiciary and prosecution. This paper adopts a qualitative methodology, in which the primary data is obtained from semi-structured interviews with twenty respondents comprising the stakeholders in the criminal justice system.

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Funding

This work is supported by research grant 600-IRMI/Dana KCM 5/3/Lestari (115/2017) from the Research Management Centre, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Selangor.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

    Zaiton Hamin, Mohd Bahrin Othman & Ahmad Ridhwan Abd Rani

  2. Student’s Affair and Alumni Division, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

    Mohd Bahrin Othman

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  1. Zaiton Hamin
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  2. Mohd Bahrin Othman
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  3. Ahmad Ridhwan Abd Rani
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Correspondence to Zaiton Hamin.

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The authors have received a research grant from the Research Management Centre, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Selangor. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Hamin, Z., Othman, M.B. & Rani, A.R.A. When Law and Practice Collide: the Implementation of the Plea-Bargaining Process in Malaysia. Asian J Criminol 14, 223–240 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-019-09288-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-019-09288-x

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