Does Jail Derail?

Abstract

Pretrial detention touches the lives of approximately 6.9 million Americans annually, with 96 percent of pretrial detainees held on an unaffordable bail. Despite being legally innocent and largely in poverty, pretrial detainees experience more severe case outcomes than released defendants, even when controlling for legal indicators and using quasi-experimental methods. I begin by reviewing the state of the literature on cumulative disadvantage and pretrial detention, focusing on convictions, guilty pleas, charge reductions, incarceration, and sentence length. As black and Latino males are more likely to be detained pretrial, I next review how pretrial detention indirectly amplifies disparities in case outcomes. I then identify gaps in the literature related to multi-stage analyses, under-studied measures, and qualitative methods. Finally, I discuss implications for theory and policy, connecting this literature and call for research to our current bail reform movement.