The Repository @ St. Cloud State

Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

5-2024

Culminating Project Type

Starred Paper

Styleguide

apa

Degree Name

Applied Economics: M.S. - 5 year track for SCSU Undergraduates

Department

Economics

College

School of Public Affairs

First Advisor

David Switzer

Second Advisor

Lynn MacDonald

Third Advisor

Kenneth Rebeck

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Keywords and Subject Headings

bail, criminal justice, pretrial detention, misdemeanors, economics, labor economics, public finance, and policy reform

Abstract

Analyzing New York pretrial data from January 2022 to June 2023, this paper utilizes multivariate regression to find inability to post bail for misdemeanors correlates with a 60.6-day increase in pretrial detention. For outer New York state (ONYC), inability to post bail for misdemeanors results in a 58.5-day increase in pretrial detention. Variables like having cases remanded and being rearrested have a respective 50.1 and 10 day increase in pretrial detention (NYC). In total, 262,336 cases were analyzed. There is strong evidence that New York’s recent bail reforms left positive effects on the pretrial process by replacing the number of cases where bail is set with release on recognizance (ROR) and non-monetary release (NMR). Meanwhile, for a small percentage of misdemeanor defendants (3.5% to 14% depending on the county) their inability to post bail continues to result in excessive detention. Variables like race, crime accused, and gender are much less important than one would expect. With the size of New York and the outsized impact of bail on pretrial detention, this paper questions the necessity for setting bail for any misdemeanor cases in the United States. The economic cost of pretrial detention is incurred by the state and defendants. Explaining the most significant predictors of pretrial detention provides tangible numbers to measure the economic cost of bail.

Key-words: Pretrial Detention, Cash Bail, Arraignment, Criminal Justice Reform, New York, Economic Analysis, Data Analytics, Multivariate Regressions.

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