This is just awful.
Look at plea bargains from the perspective of a defendant for a moment. If you’re guilty, then plea bargains allow you to escape some larger charges that you’re actually guilty of, but if you’re innocent, they are a nightmare. you face the prospect of even harsher punishment, being locked up until a delayed trial date and suffering loss of job, income and so on because you’re suspected of a crime, and the probability of being unjustly convicted anyway, if you don’t have an expensive lawyer; or admitting to something you haven’t actually done just to get the inevitable unjust punishment over quicker.
Systematically, plea bargains are toxic to justice- they can only result in worse outcomes for society as a whole, and often intimidate innocent people into pleading guilty. They do nothing to reduce crime, they just juice up the conviction stats and fuel the incarceration machine.
And your throwaway remark that “The system does not have the resources for jury trials for every single offense” shows up the larger problem. There should be the resources for a jury trial for everyone- no question, it’s a basic right.
