US indeed has draconian punishments. However 30 years is a starting/worst case scenario to encourage a plea bargain.
Plea bargains are horrendous and really should be banned or made extremely rare.
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I completely agree, but plea bargains are also the basic mechanism by which the justice system functioned. They represent something like 95% of convictions. If everybody who currently took a plea switched to demanding a trial, we'd need at least twenty times as many judges and juries.
I'm not against that, mind you, I'm just saying that you are proposing a massive sea change in the legal system. Everything about the recommended sentencing to basic questions like "what incentives can we offer to flip on someone" would need to be completely rethought.
Given the US imprisons its citizens at nearly ten times the rate that Germany does, has hugely unpredictable outcomes to civil suits, and clearly has serious problems with reliability of convictions in criminal cases, the question shouldn't be whether the US should have radical changes to its legal system, but how to achieve it.
Germans also tend to be more stable and commit less crimes than the USA, the crime rate here is also very high compared to Germany, including white collar crime. However, yeah our industrial prison complex system is extremely backward and should concentrate much more on rehabilitation and making sure that it's a (relatively) safe environment with things like 100% camera coverage since prison violence and rape are such a common thing.
I agree to an extend. However plea bargains can also be a valuable tool for getting to higher ups that actually make difference in some crimes. That's why they will try to flip low end lieutenants in racketeering to nail the big guys.