The link between bond forfeiture and pretrial release mechanism: The case of Dallas County, Texas.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

The goal of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of four pretrial jail release mechanisms (i.e., bond types) commonly used during the pretrial phase of the criminal justice process in terms of their ability to discriminate between defendants failing to appear in court (i.e., bond forfeiture). These include attorney bonds, cash bonds, commercial bail bonds, and release via a pretrial services agency.

Methods

A multi-treatment propensity score matching protocol was employed to assess between-release-mechanism differences in the conditional probability of failure to appear/bond forfeiture. Data were culled from archival state justice records comprising all defendants booked into the Dallas County, Texas jail during 2008 (n = 29,416).

Results

The results sugges

SUBMITTER: Clipper SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5560530 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature