Sticking to the Old Ways in the Plea-Bargaining Process: Some evidence from Malaysia

Abstract

In Malaysia, the plea-bargaining process was formalized in 2010 with the amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code 1976, which was intended to reduce the number of criminal cases that could be resolved at the pre-trial stage. However, the law in action does not appear to be in line with the law in the statute book. Hence, this paper aims at examining the reality of the plea-bargaining process and the extent of the applications in Malaysia. This paper adopts a qualitative methodology, of which the primary data is obtained from semi-structured while the secondary data obtained from library-based sources.