Publication Date
1-13-2025
Document Type
Article
Organizational Units
Josef Korbel School of International Studies, Public Policy, Scrivner Institute for Public Policy
Keywords
Regression discontinuity in time, Administrative data, Jails, Cash bail, Inequality statements and declarations
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.
Copyright Date
1-13-2025
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Rights Holder
Kaitlyn M. Sims
Provenance
Received from Elsevier
File Format
application/pdf
Language
English (eng)
Extent
9 pgs
File Size
2.25 MB
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by the Author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as
Sims, M. K. (2025). Policymaking and Pretrial Fairness: Evaluating Illinois' Ban on Cash Bail Beyond Chicago. Journal of Criminal Justice, 96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2025.102354
Publication Title
Journal of Criminal Justice
Volume
96
First Page
102354
ISSN
0047-2352
Recommended Citation
Sims, Kaitlyn M., "Policymaking and Pretrial Fairness: Evaluating Illinois' Ban on Cash Bail Beyond Chicago" (2025). Global and Public Affairs: Faculty Scholarship. 30.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/korbel_faculty/30
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2025.102354
Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, Infrastructure Commons, International and Area Studies Commons, Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation Commons, Public Administration Commons, Public Policy Commons