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Pretrial Release Practices in the United States, 1976-1978

Metadata Updated: November 28, 2023

Funded by the National Institute of Justice, this data collection represents Phase II of a larger project to evaluate pretrial release practices. The study focuses on four major topics: (1) release--rates and types of releases, defendant or case characteristics and their impact on the release decision, (2) court appearance --extent to which released defendants appear in court, factors associated with defendants' failure to appear in court, (3) pretrial criminality--number of rearrests during the pretrial period and the factors predicting rearrest, charges and rates of conviction for crimes committed during the pretrial period, and (4) impact of pretrial release programs--effect of programs on release decisions and on the behavior of defendants. The study is limited to adult defendants processed through state and local trial courts, and to pretrial release rather than pretrial intervention or diversion programs. Part 1 is an analysis of release practices and outcomes in eight jurisdictions (Baltimore City and Baltimore County, Maryland, Washington, DC, Dade County, Florida, Jefferson County, Kentucky, Pima County, Arizona, Santa Cruz County, California, and Santa Clara County, California). The pretrial release "delivery systems," that is, the major steps and individuals and organizations in the pretrial release process, were analyzed in each jurisdiction. Additionally, a sample of defendants from each site was studied from point of arrest to final case disposition and sentencing. Part 2 of this study examines the impact of the existence of pretrial release programs on release, court appearance, and pretrial release outcomes. An experimental design was used to compare a group of defendants who participated in a pretrial release program with a control group who did not. Experiments were conducted in Pima County (Tucson), Arizona, Baltimore City, Maryland, Lincoln, Nebraska, and Jefferson County (Beaumont-Port Arthur), Texas. In Tucson, separate experiments were conducted for felony and misdemeanor cases.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: us-pd

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date August 18, 2021
Metadata Updated Date November 28, 2023

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOJ JSON

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date August 18, 2021
Metadata Updated Date November 28, 2023
Publisher National Institute of Justice
Maintainer
Identifier 3720
Data First Published 1984-03-18T00:00:00
Language eng
Data Last Modified 2005-11-04T00:00:00
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 011:21
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://www.justice.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id c025061b-2e14-4fcb-80e5-02ba05052793
Harvest Source Id 3290e90a-116f-42fc-86ac-e65521ef3b68
Harvest Source Title DOJ JSON
License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
Program Code 011:060
Publisher Hierarchy Office of Justice Programs > National Institute of Justice
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 84c15722ab5dd31d69634d548220d8a62406055363597824f17354ac2b2b53d2
Source Schema Version 1.1

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