Reducing Racial Disparities in Bail Decisions

Racial disparities exist throughout the criminal justice system and are particularly prominent in bail setting decisions. Black felony defendants are 10 percent more likely than white defendants to be detained before trial. These racial disparities may reflect rushed judicial decision making and biased beliefs about the relative risk of defendants based on race. In this research project, economist and legal scholar Crystal Yang and economist and public policy scholar Will Dobbie will collaborate with courts from several states to test the effectiveness of three interventions in reducing racial disparities in bail decisions. The first intervention provides judges with objective information on the pretrial risk of white and non-white defendants, in an attempt to correct inaccurate stereotypes. The second intervention provides a simple benchcard (or checklist) to judges to help slow down and systematize their decision making. The third intervention provides detailed feedback to judges on their own outcomes over time. Yang and Dobbie will use the randomized roll-out of the interventions to estimate the causal impact of each of the three interventions on: 1) average pretrial release and misconduct rates; and 2) racial disparities in pretrial release and misconduct rates. They will analyze the impact for subgroups of interest, separately estimating the effects for misdemeanor (versus felony) defendants and first-time (versus repeat) offenders and for less-experienced (versus more-experienced) judges and judges who have the least (versus most accurate) accurate beliefs on the risk of releasing non-white defendants.