I feel the policy behind plea bargains is sound. Some of the problems the Japan criminal justice has is because plea bargains are not generally allowed except f

I feel the policy behind plea bargains is sound. Some of the problems the Japan criminal justice has is because plea bargains are not generally allowed except for recent limited reforms that in some ways make things worse. Many US-style plea bargains are reasonable and do not require defendants to lie because they are pleading guilty to lesser included crimes rather than lying about what they did. The problem is when plea bargaining is used as a weapon that encourages false confessions or false guilty pleas. Or, more generally, when the choice to plead guilty or go to trial is unbalanced such that defendants will not even try to force the government to prove their case. This is bad for justice. The Feds are big into this. They wield/abuse 18 U.S. Code § 1001 (making false statements a felony) with abandon. A defendant can be faced with $100,000s in legal fees with the potential of decades in federal prison or they can plead guilty to one count of 18 USC 1001, it happens everyday (probably several times a day).