Background 7.  There is a common view that the trial is the key safeguard which guarantees the fairness of criminal convictions. In reality, however, many convictions are imposed without a full trial ever taking place as a result of systems which incentivise suspects to waive their right to a trial. Taking various different forms across the globe, including plea bargaining, abbreviated trials and cooperating witness procedures, this growing practice has considerable implications – both good and bad – for human rights and the rule of law. 8. Trial waiver systems – defined for the purpose of this report as creating “a process not prohibited by law under which criminal defendants agree to accept guilt and/or cooperate with the investigative authority in exchange for some benefit from the state, most commonly in the form of reduced charges and/or lower sentences” – have the potential to enhance human rights protection in criminal proceedings due largely to the removal of the burdens which full trial procedures impose on criminal justice systems. Trial waiver systems can provide a solution to endemic case backlogs that contribute to excessive pre-trial detention, by reducing the time and resources necessary to adjudicate cases. These systems can also be employed, for example, to combat corruption and complex criminal networks, to reduce prison sentences and the over-reliance on incarceration and to improve the protection of the rights of victims. 9. In addition to these benefits, however, human rights and rule of law concerns can also result from the decreasing incidence of full trials as the means of administering criminal justice around the world. Trial waiver systems usually substitute confessions and waivers of procedural rights in place of the procedural and evidentiary rigours of the trial, removing many of the key points at which police and prosecutorial activity is made public and scrutinised. This lowered threshold of scrutiny can exacerbate and reduce accountability for human rights abuses that occur during arrest and the pre-trial period. It can also unsettle the balance of power between actors in the criminal justice system and overly incentivise the use of criminal sanctions to address social problems, with potentially far-ranging impacts on the rule of law. 8. 10.  In recent years, Fair Trials’ network members from within the European Union (EU), and partners and colleagues from countries throughout the Western Balkans, Caucasus, and Latin America have reported the introduction of trial waiver systems, often inspired by the US model and sometimes directly supported by US development funds and technical assistance. Lawyers frequently express concern about the impact these new systems have on the rights of defendants, and were not comforted by the example of plea bargaining in the US, which they understood to be the birthplace of modern trial waiver systems but which has been criticised by lawyers and human rights advocates in recent years. 11.  By 2015, Fair Trials had begun to identify that trial waiver systems were a growing global phenomenon with the potential for both advancing human rights protection in criminal proceedings, but also threatening the integrity of due process. Despite the growing reliance on these systems in place of full trials, and their clear impact on human rights (for better or for worse), we were concerned by the lack of a legal and human rights framework to regulate their use. Colleagues in and beyond Europe reporting the introduction of trial waiver systems often noted that there seemed to be insufficient consideration by law makers of the potential impact of the widespread avoidance of trials on systemic rule of law concerns, such as the openness of investigations and criminal proceedings, the relative power of prosecutors and judges, and the due process rights of defendants. 12. Fair Trials therefore set out to gather information on the breadth and forms of trial waiver systems, in order to better understand the scope of their use, and their potential impact on human rights protection and the rule of law. In that effort, together with pro bono partner Freshfields, Fair Trials has spent the last two years engaged in an investigation into the global use of trial waiver systems. This report presents the results of that research, analysing the drivers of this phenomenon, assessing the legal and human rights implications and providing recommendations for the development of a rights-based approach to trial waiver systems. We hope that it serves as the basis for both deeper analysis and reform efforts on a jurisdictionspecific level, as well as prompting greater international collaboration and joint efforts toward a greater understanding, leveraging, and regulation of the human rights impacts of trial waiver systems.