The Huffington Post, October 14, 2010 by Alex Gronke
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-gronke/forget-white-boys-the-rea_b_761839.html
Even as sentencing guidelines increasingly limit judicial autonomy, prosecutors enjoy tremendous leeway in the deals they make with defendants in return for guilty pleas. “Plea bargaining, by its nature, is done behind the scenes,” said Barry Krisberg, a criminologist at the University of California’s Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice. “It’s one of the least understood areas of the criminal justice system.”