DECISION‐MAKING IN THE CRIMINAL COURTS:

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Abstract
This article attempts an analysis of the relationship between the guilty‐plea bargaining process and presentence investigation reports. It is argued that because plea‐bargaining has increasingly come to involve bargaining over sentence. probation officers, as a consequence, have increasingly come to experience encroachment upon their decision‐making autonomy. In this predicament they have found little support from judges, who, committed to norms of managerial efficiency will reassert the primacy of the plea‐bargain when probation officers refuse to ratify previously negotiated sentence agreements. The policy implications of this for the criminal justice system are discussed.

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