Poverty and Pretrial Justice: An analysis of pretrial administrative data from one jurisdiction

• In Event: Pretrial Justice Working Group: Findings From Four Pretrial Studies

Abstract

Over the past several years, criminal justice reform efforts have emphasized the pretrial process, focusing in particular on the relationship between poverty and bail decisions. The purpose of this study was to therefore better understand the impact of poverty on the pretrial process. This study provided a quantitative analysis of archival administrative pretrial data (jail and pretrial services data) from a large jurisdiction over a single fiscal year (2016). Detained pretrial defendants (e.g. those denied bond and those held on a money bond) were included in this study. A total of 2,330 pretrial defendants were evaluated. Several indicators of poverty were evaluated (e.g. employment status, income, housing status, address information) in conjunction with important pretrial process outcomes (e.g. initial bail decision, bond amount, length of time held pretrial). Results from this study will be presented and lessons learned from evaluating administrative pretrial data will also be discussed.

Authors

• Catherine S. Kimbrell, George Mason University

• David B. Wilson, George Mason University