Evaluating the Impacts of Eliminating Prosecutorial Requests for Cash Bail

Abstract

Courts routinely use low cash bail as a financial incentive to ensure that released defendants appear in court and abstain from crime. This can create burdens for defendants with little empirical evidence on its efficacy. We exploit a prosecutor-driven reform that led to a sharp reduction in low cash bail and pretrial supervision, with no effect on pretrial detention, to test whether such incentive mechanisms succeed at their intended purpose. We find no evidence that financial collateral has a deterrent effect on failure-to-appear or pretrial crime. This paper also contributes to the literature on the role of prosecutors in criminal justice reform. We show that discretionary reforms dilute impacts and can lead to racial disparities in implementation.