Explore the vast range of titles available.

Jails and prisons are major sites of novel coronavirus (SARSCoV-2) infection. Many jurisdictions in the United States have therefore accelerated the release of low-risk offenders. Early release, however, does not address how arrest and pretrial detention practices may be contributing to disease spread. Using data from Cook County Jail-one of the largest known nodes of SARS-CoV-2 spread in the United States-in Chicago, Illinois, we analyzed the relationship between jailing practices and community infections at the ZIP code level. We found that jailcommunity cycling was a significant predictor of cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), accounting for 55 percent of the variance in case rates across ZIP codes in Chicago and 37 percent of the variance in all of Illinois. Jail-community cycling far exceeds race, poverty, public transit use, and population density as a predictor of variance. The data suggest that cycling people through Cook County Jail alone is associated with 15.7 percent of all documented COVID-19 cases in Illinois and 15.9 percent of all documented cases in Chicago as of April 19, 2020. Our findings support arguments for reduced reliance on incarceration and for related justice reforms both as emergency measures during the present pandemic and as sustained structural changes vital for future pandemic preparedness and public health.

In misdemeanor cases, pretrial detention poses a particular problem because it may induce innocent defendants to plead guilty in order to exit jail, potentially creating widespread error in case adjudication. While practitioners have long recognized this possibility, empirical evidence on the downstream impacts of pretrial detention on misdemeanor defendants and their cases remains limited. This Article uses detailed data on hundreds of thousands of misdemeanor cases resolved in Harris County, Texas—the third-largest county in the United States—to measure the effects of pretrial detention on case outcomes and future crime. We find that detained defendants are 25% more likely than similarly situated releasees to plead guilty, are 43% more likely to be sentenced to jail, and receive jail sentences that are more than twice as long on average. Furthermore, those detained pretrial are more likely to commit future crimes, which suggests that detention may have a criminogenic effect. These differences persist even after fully controlling for the initial bail amount, offense, demographic information, and criminal history characteristics. Use of more limited sets of controls, as in prior research, overstates the adverse impacts of detention. A quasi-experimental analysis based on case timing confirms that these differences likely reflect the causal effect of detention. These results raise important constitutional questions and suggest that Harris County could save millions of dollars per year, increase public safety, and reduce wrongful convictions with better pretrial release policy.

In the United States, over 400,000 individuals are in jail daily waiting for their criminal cases to be resolved. The majority of detainees are held because they cannot post bail. We estimate the impact of being detained pretrial on the likelihood of being convicted and sentence length using data on nearly a million criminal cases in New York City. Causal effects are identified using variation across arraignment judges in their propensities to detain defendants. We find that being detained increases the probability of conviction by 13 percentage points for felony defendants. Although pretrial detention lowers the probability of rearrest while cases are being adjudicated, this reduction in criminal activity is mostly offset by an increase in recidivism within 2 years after disposition. Higher pretrial detention rates among minority defendants explain 40 percent of the black-white gap in rates of being sentenced to prison and 28 percent of the Hispanic-white gap.

In September, 2015, the member states of the UN endorsed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030, which aspire to human-rights-centred approaches to ensuring the health and wellbeing of all people. The SDGs embody both the UN Charter values of rights and justice for all and the responsibility of states to rely on the best scientific evidence as they seek to better humankind. In April, 2016, these same states will consider control of illicit drugs, an area of social policy that has been fraught with controversy and thought of as inconsistent with human rights norms, and in which scientific evidence and public health approaches have arguably had too limited a role.

Existing explanations of human rights abuses emphasize a strategic logic of repression. Yet certain classes of abuses may arise absent the intent to repress because of the misaligned bureaucratic incentives of state agents. To separate accounts of strategic repression from bureaucratic incentives, we study the responses of state agents working within the Haitian criminal justice system to a randomized, free legal assistance intervention for detainees held in illegal pretrial detention. Legal assistance addresses moral hazard problems of the bureaucrats responsible for processing cases. We demonstrate that legal assistance accelerates case advancement and liberation, in line with the view that large-scale human rights abuses in the justice system can result from poor governance and not repressive intent.

ObjectiveTo examine the extent, nature and quality of literature on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of imprisoned people and prison staff.DesignScoping review.Data sourcesPubMed, Embase, CINAHL, Global Health, Cochrane, PsycINFO, PsychExtra, Web of Science and Scopus were searched for any paper from 2019 onwards that focused on the mental health impact of COVID-19 on imprisoned people and prison staff. A grey literature search focused on international and government sources and professional bodies representing healthcare, public health and prison staff was also performed. We also performed hand searching of the reference lists of included studies.Eligibility criteria for selection of studiesAll papers, regardless of study design, were included if they examined the mental health of imprisoned people or prison staff specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic. Imprisoned people could be of any age and from any countries. All languages were included. Two independent reviewers quality assessed appropriate papers.ResultsOf 647 articles found, 83 were eligible for inclusion, the majority (58%) of which were opinion pieces. The articles focused on the challenges to prisoner mental health. Fear of COVID-19, the impact of isolation, discontinuation of prison visits and reduced mental health services were all likely to have an adverse effect on the mental well-being of imprisoned people. The limited research and poor quality of articles included mean that the findings are not conclusive. However, they suggest a significant adverse impact on the mental health and well-being of those who live and work in prisons.ConclusionsIt is key to address the mental health impacts of the pandemic on people who live and work in prisons. These findings are discussed in terms of implications for getting the balance between infection control imperatives and the fundamental human rights of prison populations.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, pretrial detention accounts for all net growth in the jail population between 1983 and 2016. [...]there is a growing recognition among states, researchers, and policymakers that the use of monetary bail is an unjustifiable infringement of a person's rights that has resulted in mass overincarceration, is racially prejudiced, and is costly to the taxpayer. [...]its aims are achievable through other means. Risk assessment A pretrial-services agency uses a risk-assessment tool to produce a report that will help inform a judge's decision about pretrial release.

This paper seeks to understand how decision-making works at the first appearance hearings (Custody Hearings) in Brazil, an initiative that intends to make the Brazilian criminal justice system more accusatorial. We used primary data gathered in the hearings between April and December 2018 in nine Brazilian states. Binary logistic regression models were applied to identify the variables that affect the odds ratios of pretrial detention. Results indicated a high level of homology between the prosecutors’ requests and the judges’ decisions, even when controlling for the characteristics of offense and offender, which precludes any direct openness to the defense. Decision-making in the Custody Hearing reinforces the inquisitorial characteristics and the institutional features of the Brazilian Criminal Justice System, suggesting that the reforms carried out over the last years were not able to change how actors operate on a daily basis.

Objective To study the effect of pretrial detention on post-verdict labor market outcomes. Method We combine Chilean individual administrative data for criminal cases and labor market outcomes to estimate the effect of pretrial detention for first-time defendants on labor outcomes using the Difference-in-differences (DiD) method, controlling by individual fixed effects, and an instrumental variables (IV) approach. The IV approach takes advantage of the quasi-random assignment of judges. Results The IV results show that pretrial detention reduces the probability of having formal employment and the average monthly wage by 39% and 56% during the six months following the final trial verdict. DiD estimation delivers estimates that are between one-third and one-half smaller. The magnitudes of the effects shown continue to be relevant as much as 24 months after the final trial verdict. The negative effect of pretrial detention also exists for accused individuals whose trial does not end with a custodial sentence. The results of our analysis suggest that the negative effect of pretrial detention is (at least) driven by the lasting effect of being excluded from the labor market during the trial, the accompanying social stigma, and the impact of pretrial detention on the probability of post-verdict incarceration. Conclusion Despite the relevant and lasting effects of pretrial detention on labor market performance, the evidence suggests that individuals in both the control and treatment groups keep the same labor dynamics pretrial and posttrial if they return to work immediately after its conclusion. Therefore, conditional on the decision to keep pretrial detention as an ongoing policy, a possible avenue to attenuate the negative effect on labor outcomes is to design public policies that support access to the labor market and finding an employment position immediately following pretrial detentions and trial proceedings.

[...]it seems that the pretrial stage is so crucial to the criminal justice process that the statement \"pretrial determines mostly everything\" sums up the importance of this pivot point quite meaningfully (McCoy, 2007). Most of these efforts have occurred at the state level, where many jurisdictions are attempting to move from systems where release hinges on the defendant's capacity to pay financial bail to systems in which the release decision is guided by actuarial risk tools (Grant, 2018; Mamalian, 2011; Pretrial Justice Institute, 2012; Stevenson, 2018).5 At the federal level, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Probation and Pretrial Services Office (PPSO) sponsored its first-ever national conference devoted to federal pretrial issues in 2018. The first pretrial risk instrument dates to the early 1960s, originating with the Vera Institute's attempt to construct a scale capable of predicting whether a defendant would show up to court (Ares, Rankin, & Sturz, 1963; Eskridge, 1983). Since that period, a substantial amount of research has occurred around pretrial risk assessments, with several states and the federal system using these instruments to inform pretrial decisionmaking (Bechtel, Holsinger, Lowenkamp, & Warren, 2016; Cadigan & Lowenkamp, 2011; Desmarais et al., 2021; Desmarais, Monahan, & Austin, 2022; Goldkamp & Vilcia, 2009; Mamalian, 2011; Picard-Fritsche, Rempel, Tallon, Adler, & Reyes, 2017; Summers & Willis, 2010; LJAF, 2013). [...]the recent development of a national pretrial risk tool by the Arnold Ventures Foundation (titled the Public Safety Assessment or PSA) that could be used in any jurisdiction has further accelerated the embracing of these practices by criminal justice officials, stakeholders, and policymakers (LJAF, 2013).