B. Increasing use of trial waivers 49. Besides the growth in the number of countries formally recognising and ratifying trial waivers, the incidence of their use has also grown markedly in many countries. Data collection on the use of trial waivers is generally poor in most countries. The survey requested statistical information on the percentage of criminal cases resolved via trial waivers, but this information was not found by researchers in most jurisdictions. Even where it is available, differences and insufficiencies in data collection make comparison between jurisdictions difficult, because the basis for the statistics available is not the same. 50.  For example, some statistics relate to the total percentage of cases resolved through a guilty plea, but do not necessarily consider whether the plea is part of a trial waiver (this is the case, for example, in data from the US). Other statistics may be based on several types of trial diversion, only some of which may fall within our definition of trial waiver systems, and others are limited to data from particular courts (for example, the statistics available from England and Wales relate only to Crown Court proceedings, although many trial waivers are made without data being collected in the Magistrates’ Court). Therefore any comparison of statistics is necessarily imprecise. Even so, the data available demonstrates notable patterns. 51.  In the jurisdictions for which data was available, reliance on trial waivers varies substantially. However, there were several striking examples of the way in which trial waivers, once introduced, can quickly come to dominate criminal proceedings at the expense of traditional trials. 52. The US famously resolves 97% of its federal criminal cases through guilty pleas.72 While it is unclear, due to the lack of recording of plea negotiations, how many of these guilty pleas are entered as part of a trial waiver system, experts in US criminal justice believe it to be the overwhelming majority. The US is undoubtedly the country most extreme in its reliance on trial waivers, but it is not alone in substantial reliance on such procedures to resolve cases. In the higher courts of England and Wales, for example, in 2014 70% of all criminal cases,73 and 90% of convictions,74 were resolved through a trial waiver (known as “guilty plea”). 53. In several countries, use of trial waivers rose rapidly in a matter of a few years. For example, in Georgia, 12.7% of cases were resolved via trial waivers (known as “plea bargaining”) in 2005, which ballooned to 87.8% of cases in 2012. Similarly in Russia, use of trial waivers (through the abbreviated trial procedure) shot up from 37% in 2008 to 64% in 2014. In the first instance courts in Chongqing (one of China’s major cities), the use of trial waivers (known as “summary procedure”) increased from 61% in 2011, to 82% just two years later in 2013. In South Africa, where trial waivers (known as “plea and sentence agreements”) only account for 13.5% of case resolutions, the National Prosecuting Authority’s Annual Report for 2014-15 nonetheless reported a 33% increase from the prior year.75 54. However, it is not the case that, once introduced or formalised, trial waivers always come to dominate criminal procedure. In Italy, for example, which has utilised trial waivers (known as “patteggiamento”) since 1989, only about 4% of criminal cases are resolved through this system. In the state of New South Wales in Australia, the percentage of persons charged who were sentenced after entering a guilty plea76 has remained steady at close to 60% for the past decade – not an insubstantial number, but not apparently rising further. The paucity of reliable, comparable data on the operation of trial waiver systems makes it impossible to fully assess the scope of these widescale procedural changes. 72. United States Sentencing Commission’s 2016 Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics. Available at: http://www.ussc.gov/research/sourcebook-2016. 73. “Crown Court Sentencing Survey Annual Publication”, the Sentencing Council (2014). Available at: http://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/ CCSS-Annual-2014.pdf. 74. “Court Statistics Quarterly, January to March 2014”, Ministry of Justice, Statistics Bulletin (Jun. 19 2014). Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/file/321352/court-statistics-jan-mar-2014.pdf. 75. “Annual Report of the National Prosecuting Authority from 2014–2015”. Available at: https://www.npa.gov.za/sites/default/files/annual-reports/Annual%20 Report%202014%20-%202015.pdf 76. NB the statistics provided do not make clear what percentage of these guilty pleas were the product of a trial waiver as defined. 32.