Which is another problem, in her case...

She was condemned to house arrest, the plea bargain leaving her out of jail.

Erm...

Before the trial, she never left home anyways...

So, all the public money that was spent by the DA and the courts left us exactly at status quo.

When you see this, (1) you start wondering if lawlessness would really be worse and (2) you start thinking that bankers really deserve the public money better than DAs...

That said, cop shows aren't wrong here. Sometimes a plea bargain is a reasonable offer to get more information leading to the arrest and conviction of worse criminals. Yes, they well can and many times, like this once, do corrupt the whole process. But it's hard to see how you could get the benefits from some plea bargains without the evils of other ones.