Overuse of Pretrial Detention in tension with Judicial and Prison Reforms in the Dominican Republic

Abstract

In 2003, the Dominican Republic began to shift towards an adversarial judicial model and has implemented one of the region’s most ambitious reforms to its prison system, based on rehabilitative and human rights principles. Although these reforms have improved prison conditions and trial processes, the number of people incarcerated has nearly doubled, from 14,000 to over 26,000. This increase is due mostly to rising rates of pretrial detention, despite the availability of alternative pretrial measures. Drawing on data from prisoner surveys, interviews, and administrative data, this paper analyzes individual- and institutional-level factors that might explain variation in the decision as to whether impose pretrial detention or not. Several legal and extra-legal factors that are salient in other research on pretrial detention, such as charge and education level, are not significantly associated with pretrial detention decisions at individual level in the Dominican Republic. Qualitative findings suggest that broader system-level factors – specifically institutional capacity gaps, inaccessible cash bail, risk-averse decisions by attorneys and judges, and general penal populism – are more important. This suggests that in order for policymakers to reduce the overuse of pretrial detention, they should focus more attention on institutional and political dynamics rather than individual-level disparities.