by Esmé Lise Mailloux Govan

Abstract 

In 2020, over 630,000 American adults were detained in local jails each day, 74% of whom had not yet been convicted of a crime. These defendants were detained before going to court because they did not make bail. There is a large body of work documenting the negative impacts of pretrial detention on a variety of outcomes, both short term such as sentencing and long term such as labour market outcomes. However, most of these studies take place in the largest cities in the U.S., which is partly a result of data availability. Thus, it is unclear if these results replicate outside of these urban cores. This paper uses data from Berkshire, which is disproportionately rural and White, to test whether the negative effects of pretrial detention extend to these less studied areas. First, using Durham data, the negative effects of pretrial detention in urban areas that previous studies have reported are replicated. Then, using Berkshire data, the negative effects of pretrial detention are shown to not only extend to rural populations, but are in fact more severe.

Professor Bocar A. Ba, Faculty Advisor
Professor Jason E. Baron, Faculty Advisor
Professor Kent Kimbrough, Faculty Advisor

JEL Codes: K14; K41; K42

View Thesis