Does Cash Bail Deter Misconduct?
Abstract
Courts routinely use low cash bail as a financial incentive to ensure released defendants appear in court and abstain from crime. This can create burdens for defendants with little empirical evidence on its efficacy. We exploit a prosecutor-driven reform that led to a sharp reduction in low cash bail and pretrial supervision, with no effect on pretrial detention, to test whether such incentive mechanisms succeed at their intended purpose. We find no evidence that financial collateral has a deterrent effect on failure to appear or pretrial crime. This paper also contributes to the literature on legal actor discretion, showing that nonbinding reforms may have limited impact on jail populations. (JEL K41, K42)
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“Moreover, the database search was conducted on March 6, 2023 and some relevant articles have been published after this date, resulting in their exclusion from this scoping review (e.g., Ouss & Stevenson, 2023).”
From A Scoping Review of the Relationships Between Cash Bail, Failure to Appear, Re-Arrest, Health and Well-Being, Race, and Gender (2026) · cites this paper as Ouss & Stevenson, 2023
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- Authors
- Ouss, A., & Stevenson, M.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- University of Virginia (US)
- Venue
- American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2023-07-01
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 150-182
- ISSN
- 1945-7782 (ISSN-L)
- 1945-7790
- OpenAlex
- W4382585051
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 30
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 2
- FWCI
- 5.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- American Economic Journal Applied Economics (publishedVersion)
- Penn Carey Law Legal Scholarship Repository (University of Pennsylvania) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis
- Social Sciences › Law › Criminal Justice and Penology
- Keywords
- cash bail, pretrial detention, failure to appear, financial incentives, bail reform, jail population
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