The Sting Show - Plea Bargains, Case Closures, and the Assembly Line That Blocks Justice

Alex Andrews
20 hours ago
4 min read

By the time someone arrested in a so-called “human trafficking sting” sits down with a public defender, the outcome is already taking shape.

Not because the facts are clear. Not because harm has been proven. But because the system has calendars to clear, metrics to meet, and cases to move. Justice, at this point, is less a principle than a scheduling inconvenience.

This part of the process rarely gets a press conference. There are no flashing lights, no survivor soundbites, no sheriff at a podium. There is only quiet pressure—constant, unrelenting—to resolve cases quickly and keep the machinery running. This is where the spectacle ends and the assembly line begins.

The Choice That Isn’t One

More than 90 percent of criminal cases in the United States end in plea bargains. Not because everyone is guilty. Not because trials are unnecessary. But because the system has been engineered to make trials functionally impossible. Prosecutors and public defenders are not negotiating on equal footing; they are both trapped inside a structure that rewards speed, volume, and closure over truth or accountability.

For prosecutors, success is measured in convictions and clearance rates. For public defenders, survival is measured in triage—deciding which cases can withstand attention and which must be moved along to prevent total collapse. In sting cases, particularly those involving prostitution-related charges, the message is blunt and familiar: plead now, go home sooner. Push back, and you will pay for it.

Prosecutors as Risk Managers

Prosecutors are often portrayed as neutral seekers of justice. In practice, they function as risk managers. Trials are expensive. Trials take time. Trials introduce the possibility—however remote—of losing. Plea deals eliminate all of that. They offer certainty, efficiency, and a clean statistical win.

To secure those outcomes, prosecutors stack charges, add enhancements, and threaten jail time or probation violations. Not because the case is strong, but because leverage closes files. This happens even when there is no evidence of trafficking, even when the arrest clearly involves consensual adult sex, even when the alleged harm is speculative at best. The goal is not justice. The goal is throughput.

And because prosecutors’ offices are publicly funded, every hour spent propping up a weak sting case is an hour not spent addressing violence, abuse, or real exploitation. The system calls this efficiency. Everyone else should call it misallocation.

Public Defenders and the Arithmetic of Collapse

Public defenders are not failing their clients. The system is failing them. Most carry caseloads two to five times higher than ethical standards recommend. Every new sting dumps dozens of additional cases into offices that are already stretched past the breaking point—without added funding, staff, or time.

A defender may have fifteen minutes. Sometimes less. In that window, the goal becomes harm reduction, not justice: minimize jail time, avoid probation traps, get someone back to work, back to their kids, back to housing before everything collapses. That often means advising a plea, even when the charge is unjust and the long-term consequences are severe.

This isn’t strategy. It’s damage control. And every plea entered under these conditions props up the fiction that the system is functioning as intended.

Plea Bargaining as Economic Coercion

Plea bargaining in sting cases is not consent. It is coercion dressed up as choice. Plead guilty and pay fines, fees, program costs, and probation supervision. Or fight the case and risk weeks in jail before trial, lost housing or custody, missed work, and harsher sentencing if you lose.

For people already living on the margins, that is not a decision. It is a hostage negotiation. Once the plea is entered, the system gets exactly what it wants: a conviction, a closed case, revenue from fees and programs, and another data point to justify the next sting. Everyone moves on—except the person now carrying a record that will follow them long after the headlines fade.

Why the System Stays Jammed

Plea bargaining was never meant to be the backbone of the criminal legal system. Under mass criminalization, however, it has become the only way the system can function at all. That does not make it efficient. It makes it dishonest.

In the context of trafficking stings, plea deals hide weak cases from scrutiny, prevent judicial review of unlawful policing, silence challenges to criminalization, inflate success statistics, and shift costs onto defendants and their communities. Justice requires time, resources, and a willingness to lose sometimes. This system is built to avoid all three.

Follow the Money, Find the Incentives

If prosecutors were rewarded for reducing harm instead of closing cases, if public defenders were funded to actually defend, and if courts were evaluated on fairness rather than throughput, plea bargaining would not dominate the system the way it does. But as long as arrests generate budgets, pleas generate revenue, and convictions generate political capital, the deals will keep coming—whether or not justice ever enters the room.

Plea bargaining is not a side effect of trafficking stings. It is the mechanism that makes them viable.

Without pleas, the system would choke on its own volume. Without pressure, most of these cases would never survive trial. Without coercion, the narrative would fall apart.