“I’m Taking It into Account”: Assessment of Accused Person’s Riskiness in Pretrial Hearings

• In Event: 4155 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 9. Monetary Sanctions, Pre-Trial Detention, and Misdemeanor Courts

Abstract

Recently, much public attention has been paid to the inequality created through the system of monetary bond. While we know that bond and surveillance mechanisms are distributed unfairly to people of color and people from low incomes, we don’t know how or why these discrepancies happen in the courtroom. Using ethnographic observations from Chicago’s central criminal courthouse, I argue that these decisions are based on a judge’s perception of an accused person’s riskiness, and further, that this riskiness is often tied to the accused person’s social identity. Social identities are explicitly called upon by judges when it is relevant to an accused person’s age and class/employment status, but in the era of colorblind racism, past criminal contact becomes a proxy for an accused person’s race.

Author

• Erin Eife, University of Illinois at Chicago