[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlstud/doi10.1086-688907.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Heavy Costs of High Bail: Evidence from Judge Randomization

Author

Listed:
  • Arpit Gupta
  • Christopher Hansman
  • Ethan Frenchman
Abstract
In the United States, roughly 450,000 people are detained awaiting trial on any given day, typically because they have not posted bail. Using a large sample of criminal cases in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, we analyze the consequences of the money bail system by exploiting the variation in bail-setting tendencies among randomly assigned bail judges. Our estimates suggest that the assignment of money bail leads to a 12 percent increase in the likelihood of conviction and a 6-9 percent increase in recidivism. Our results highlight the importance of credit constraints in shaping defendant outcomes and point to important fairness considerations in the institutional design of the American money bail system.

Suggested Citation

  • Arpit Gupta & Christopher Hansman & Ethan Frenchman, 2016. "The Heavy Costs of High Bail: Evidence from Judge Randomization," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 45(2), pages 471-505.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/688907
    DOI: 10.1086/688907
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/688907
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/688907
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/688907?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anna Aizer & Joseph J. Doyle, 2015. "Juvenile Incarceration, Human Capital, and Future Crime: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(2), pages 759-803.
    2. David S. Abrams & Chris Rohlfs, 2011. "Optimal Bail And The Value Of Freedom: Evidence From The Philadelphia Bail Experiment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(3), pages 750-770, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Will Dobbie & Crystal S. Yang, 2021. "The US Pretrial System: Balancing Individual Rights and Public Interests," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(4), pages 49-70, Fall.
    2. Will Dobbie & Jacob Goldin & Crystal S. Yang, 2018. "The Effects of Pretrial Detention on Conviction, Future Crime, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(2), pages 201-240, February.
    3. Mark L. Egan & Gregor Matvos & Amit Seru, 2018. "Arbitration with Uninformed Consumers," NBER Working Papers 25150, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Pekkurnaz, Didem, 2023. "Causal effect of obesity on the probability of employment in women in Turkey," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    5. Johannes W. Ligtenberg & Tiemen Woutersen, 2024. "Multidimensional clustering in judge designs," Papers 2406.09473, arXiv.org.
    6. Brigham Frandsen & Lars Lefgren & Emily Leslie, 2023. "Judging Judge Fixed Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(1), pages 253-277, January.
    7. Albright, Alex, 2022. "No Money Bail, No Problems? Trade-offs in a Pretrial Automatic Release Program," SocArXiv 42pbz, Center for Open Science.
    8. repec:cup:judgdm:v:17:y:2022:i:6:p:1176-1207 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Campbell, Christopher M. & Labrecque, Ryan M. & Weinerman, Michael & Sanchagrin, Ken, 2020. "Gauging detention dosage: Assessing the impact of pretrial detention on sentencing outcomes using propensity score modeling," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    10. Jason Baron, E. & Jacob, Brian & Ryan, Joseph, 2023. "Pretrial juvenile detention," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    11. Jon Kleinberg & Himabindu Lakkaraju & Jure Leskovec & Jens Ludwig & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2018. "Human Decisions and Machine Predictions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(1), pages 237-293.
    12. Amanda Agan & Matthew Freedman & Emily Owens, 2021. "Is Your Lawyer a Lemon? Incentives and Selection in the Public Provision of Criminal Defense," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(2), pages 294-309, May.
    13. Shroff, Ravi & Vamvourellis, Konstantinos, 2022. "Pretrial release judgments and decision fatigue," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117579, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. David Arnold & Will Dobbie & Crystal S Yang, 2018. "Racial Bias in Bail Decisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(4), pages 1885-1932.
    15. Elsa Augustine & Johanna Lacoe & Steven Raphael & Alissa Skog, 2022. "The Impact of Felony Diversion in San Francisco," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(3), pages 683-709, June.
    16. Alexander Lundberg, 2024. "Do prosecutors induce the innocent to plead guilty?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(2), pages 650-674, April.
    17. Robert S. Erikson, 2022. "Appellate court assignments as a natural experiment: Gender panel effects in sex discrimination cases," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(2), pages 423-446, June.
    18. Megan T Stevenson, 2018. "Distortion of Justice: How the Inability to Pay Bail Affects Case Outcomes," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 34(4), pages 511-542.
    19. Sloan, Carly Will & Naufal, George S & Caspers, Heather, 2018. "The Effect of Risk Assessment Scores on Judicial Behavior and Defendant Outcomes," IZA Discussion Papers 11948, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Angela Zhou & Andrew Koo & Nathan Kallus & Rene Ropac & Richard Peterson & Stephen Koppel & Tiffany Bergin, 2021. "An Empirical Evaluation of the Impact of New York's Bail Reform on Crime Using Synthetic Controls," Papers 2111.08664, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2023.
    21. repec:jdm:journl:v:17:y:2022:i:6:p:1176-1207 is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jon Kleinberg & Himabindu Lakkaraju & Jure Leskovec & Jens Ludwig & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2018. "Human Decisions and Machine Predictions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(1), pages 237-293.
    2. van Ours, Jan C. & Williams, Jenny & Ward, Shannon, 2015. "Bad Behavior: Delinquency, Arrest and Early School Leaving," CEPR Discussion Papers 10755, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Anna Bindler & Nadine Ketel, 2022. "Scaring or Scarring? Labor Market Effects of Criminal Victimization," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 40(4), pages 939-970.
    4. Lavecchia, Adam M. & Oreopoulos, Philip & Spencer, Noah, 2024. "The Impact of Comprehensive Student Support on Crime: Evidence from the Pathways to Education Program," IZA Discussion Papers 16724, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Bastien Michel & Camille Hémet, 2022. "Custodial versus non-custodial sentences: Long-run evidence from an anticipated reform," PSE Working Papers halshs-03899897, HAL.
    6. Esteban M. Aucejo & Jonathan James, 2019. "Catching up to girls: Understanding the gender imbalance in educational attainment within race," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(4), pages 502-525, June.
    7. Burlinson, Andrew & Giulietti, Monica & Law, Cherry & Liu, Hui-Hsuan, 2021. "Fuel poverty and financial distress," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    8. Chen, Daniel L. & Levonyan, Vardges & Yeh, Susan, 2016. "Policies Affect Preferences: Evidence from Random Variation in Abortion Jurisprudence," IAST Working Papers 16-58, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    9. Huber Martin & Wüthrich Kaspar, 2019. "Local Average and Quantile Treatment Effects Under Endogeneity: A Review," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-27, January.
    10. Brigham Frandsen & Lars Lefgren & Emily Leslie, 2023. "Judging Judge Fixed Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(1), pages 253-277, January.
    11. Magnus Lofstrom & Steven Raphael, 2016. "Crime, the Criminal Justice System, and Socioeconomic Inequality," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 103-126, Spring.
    12. Rehwald, Kai & Rosholm, Michael & Rouland, Bénédicte, 2018. "Labour market effects of activating sick-listed workers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 15-32.
    13. Isaiah Andrews & Timothy B. Armstrong, 2017. "Unbiased instrumental variables estimation under known first‐stage sign," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(2), pages 479-503, July.
    14. Alison Evans Cuellar & Dhaval M. Dave, 2015. "Causal Effects of Mental Health Treatment on Education Outcomes for Youth in the Justice System," NBER Working Papers 21206, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Anthony Bald & Eric Chyn & Justine Hastings & Margarita Machelett, 2022. "The Causal Impact of Removing Children from Abusive and Neglectful Homes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 130(7), pages 1919-1962.
    16. Anaïs Henneguelle & Benjamin Monnery & Annie Kensey, 2016. "Better at Home than in Prison? The Effects of Electronic Monitoring on Recidivism in France," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 629-667.
    17. Ater, Itai & Givati, Yehonatan & Rigbi, Oren, 2014. "Organizational structure, police activity and crime," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 62-71.
    18. Bennett, Patrick, 2018. "The heterogeneous effects of education on crime: Evidence from Danish administrative twin data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 160-177.
    19. Stephen Machin & Matteo Sandi & Steve Machin, 2024. "Crime and Education," CESifo Working Paper Series 11450, CESifo.
    20. Robert Collinson & John Eric Humphries & Nicholas Mader & Davin Reed & Daniel Tannenbaum & Winnie van Dijk, 2024. "Eviction and Poverty in American Cities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 139(1), pages 57-120.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/688907. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.