Criminal Procedural Agreements in China and England and Wales

Abstract

The past decades have witnessed a marked convergence of various practices alongside conventional criminal proceedings containing negotiations and resulting in agreements between suspects or defendants and criminal justice authorities. These agreements, under the heading of ‘criminal procedural agreements’ (CPAs), are the objective of this study. CPA refers to various types of agreement reached between suspects, defendants or offenders (hereinafter ‘offender’ in general) and criminal justice authorities during criminal proceedings where the former agrees to implement certain forms of cooperation in exchange for lenient treatments from the latter.