Plea bargaining is viewed as a process in which the participants have little personal stake in the outcome; prosecutor and defense counsel negotiate to reduce a more serious charge if the defendant will plead guilty to a lesser offense. In some jurisdictions, up to 90 percent of the criminal cases are handled in this way. The guilt or innocence of the accused is often of less concern than the need to relieve an overcrowded court calendar. For example, as one speaker points out, the plea bargaining process assumes guilt rather than innocence. The proposed improvements would aim at a more principled kind of pretrial procedure wich would bring together all the parties in a case -- including the accused offender and the victim -- in a judicially controlled attempt to achieve a just settlement. A list of speakers is included.