This study examined the effect of race on the pretrial release decision for drug offenders. Although this decision point has not been examined as extensively as the final sentencing decision, it is a critical discretion point which impacts defendants’ future sentencing outcomes. The results found that race had a significant impact on judges’ decisions to release a defendant on recognizance, wit...

Abstract Field studies in many domains have found evidence of decision fatigue, a phenomenon describing how quality can be impaired by the act making previous decisions. Debate remains, however, over posited psychological mechanisms underlying and size effects high-stakes settings. We examine an extensive set pretrial arraignments large, urban court system to investigate judicial release bail d...

PURPOSE The goal of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of four pretrial jail release mechanisms (i.e., bond types) commonly used during the pretrial phase of the criminal justice process in terms of their ability to discriminate between defendants failing to appear in court (i.e., bond forfeiture). These include attorney bonds, cash bonds, commercial bail bonds, and release via a pretrial ...

Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. INTRODUCTION The for-profit bail bonding industry has relied upon several recent studies to make the claim that commercial surety bonds are the most effective type of pretrial release. This paper provides an overview of those s...

Court-mandated downsizing of the CA prison system has led to a redistribution of detainees from prisons to CA county jails, and subsequent jail overcrowding. Using data that is representative of the LA County jail system, we build a mathematical model that tracks the flow of individuals during arraignment, pretrial release or detention, case disposition, jail sentence, and possible recidivism d...

The conditions under which an individual accused of a crime can remain at liberty prior to the resolution of the criminal charge against him have evolved over time in the American system of criminal justice.' For most of this country's history, pretrial release conditions were almost exclusively defined in financial terms, i.e., the amount of "bail" a defendant or his surety was required to ple...

In misdemeanor cases, pretrial detention poses a particular problem because it may induce otherwise innocent defendants to plead guilty in order to exit jail, potentially creating widespread error in case adjudication. While practitioners have long recognized this possibility, empirical evidence on the downstream impacts of pretrial detention on misdemeanor defendants and their cases remains li...

Title of Document: RACE, SENTENCING, AND THE PRETRIAL PROCESS Michelle Elizabeth Hart, Master of Arts, 2006 Directed By: Professor Shawn Bushway, Criminology and Criminal Justice Previous research has suggested that racial disparity originates from judicial decisions at sentencing; however I argue that racial disparity may originate at the pretrial stage. First, research has consistently demons...