Plea bargaining in the United States
The constitutionality of plea bargaining was established by "Brady v. United States" in 1970, although the Supreme Court warned that plea incentives which were sufficiently large or coercive as to over-rule defendants' abilities to act freely, or used in a manner giving rise to a significant number of innocent people pleading guilty, might be prohibited or lead to concerns over constitutionality. "Santobello v. New York" added that when plea bargains are broken, legal remedies exist.
Fine (penalty)
Before 1 September 1990, all traffic violations were punished via the criminal law. The suspects were first offered a sort of plea bargain. This mostly contains a fine. If the suspect didn't pay the fine of this plea bargain, the public prosecutor had to open a criminal case, otherwise he wasn't authorized to collect the fine through force. The case had to be withdrawn when the capacity of the courts or the prosecutor's office didn't allow the start of a criminal case for a traffic violation. This was the case very often. This situation led to a negative spiral, because traffic offenders hoped and expected their case to be withdrawn, and didn't pay the plea bargain fine. This led to a growing pressure on the capacity of the courts, which causes more sepots (decisions not to prosecute). This encouraged more offenders not to pay, etc.