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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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.