Policymaking and pretrial fairness: Evaluating Illinois' ban on cash bail beyond Chicago

IF 3.3 1区社会学 Q1 CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY

Journal of Criminal Justice Pub Date : 2025-01-01 DOI:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2025.102354

Kaitlyn M. Sims

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Over 400,000 people are incarcerated awaiting trial each day in the United States. Many of these individuals are held because they are unable to post cash bail, generating substantial economic inequality between those who are able to be released and those who must wait. Illinois's Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA) banned cash bail in 2023 to reduce economic inequity and remove judicial discretion in pretrial decisions. I use daily roster data from multiple suburban and rural Illinois jails and a regression-discontinuity-in-time (RDiT) approach to test for changes to jail composition after the law went into effect. Jail population sizes decreased, though less than might be expected relative to the total size of the jail. Individuals held in jail post-PFA are more likely to be held on violent offenses and less likely to be women. I find no change in the percentage of the jail roster comprised of people of color, suggesting that while fewer people of color were held pre-trial, the law did not accomplish its goal of reducing racial inequity in pretrial detention. These findings indicate that while banning cash bail did reduce jail populations, it was not a panacea for addressing inequity in the criminal-legal system.

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政策制定和审前公平：评估伊利诺斯州除芝加哥以外的现金保释禁令

在美国，每天有超过40万人被监禁等待审判。其中许多人被关押是因为他们无法支付现金保释金，这在能够被释放的人和必须等待的人之间造成了严重的经济不平等。伊利诺伊州的《审前公平法》（PFA）在2023年禁止现金保释，以减少经济不平等，并取消审前裁决中的司法自由裁量权。我使用了伊利诺斯州多个郊区和农村监狱的每日名册数据，并使用了一种回归-不连续性-时间（RDiT）方法来测试法律生效后监狱构成的变化。监狱人口规模减少了，尽管相对于监狱的总规模，这一比例低于预期。pfa后被关进监狱的人更有可能是暴力犯罪，女性的可能性更小。我发现有色人种囚犯的比例没有变化，这表明虽然审前羁押的有色人种减少了，但法律并没有实现减少审前羁押中的种族不平等的目标。这些发现表明，虽然禁止现金保释确实减少了监狱人口，但它并不是解决刑事司法系统不平等问题的灵丹妙药。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Criminal Justice CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY-

CiteScore

6.90

自引率

9.10%

发文量

审稿时长

23 days

期刊介绍： The Journal of Criminal Justice is an international journal intended to fill the present need for the dissemination of new information, ideas and methods, to both practitioners and academicians in the criminal justice area. The Journal is concerned with all aspects of the criminal justice system in terms of their relationships to each other. Although materials are presented relating to crime and the individual elements of the criminal justice system, the emphasis of the Journal is to tie together the functioning of these elements and to illustrate the effects of their interactions. Articles that reflect the application of new disciplines or analytical methodologies to the problems of criminal justice are of special interest. Since the purpose of the Journal is to provide a forum for the dissemination of new ideas, new information, and the application of new methods to the problems and functions of the criminal justice system, the Journal emphasizes innovation and creative thought of the highest quality.