Slowing Down Reinvolvement in the System: A Multi-Site Examination of the Effects of COVID on Time Until Readmission into Jail

The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented time in the United States, resulting in substantive changes to policy and practice to curb the spread of the virus. This was nowhere more evident than in the criminal legal system where agencies implemented a wide-variety of policies to limit the spread of COVID-19. In addition to limiting the spread, the criminal legal system’s response to the pandemic could have impacted the functioning of the system, potentially reducing the number of and speed at which individuals reencountered the system after an initial booking. To date, however, no research has been conducted to examine how the legal system’s response to the pandemic influenced the speed at which individuals became reinvolved in the system. Through reliance on jail data from five jurisdictions across the United States, the current study examined if being booked into jail after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with the number of days until the individual experienced a subsequent booking into jail. The findings suggested that the legal system’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic delayed individual’s reinvolvement in the criminal legal system, permitting more individuals to live in the community than in a facility. These findings suggest that more research is needed to identify the specific policies and procedures that increased the time until an individual became reinvolved in the system, as it could help diminish the number of individuals processed through the system on multiple occasions.