Bail, Bias and Bargaining: Investigating Racial Dynamics in Plea Negotiations across Local Court Communities

More than 95% of convictions in American courts are the result of guilty pleas, which are profoundly shaped by prosecutorial discretion. Prosecutors exert considerable influence over a broad range of consequential decisions that are subject to less public oversight and formal legal review than other court actors; yet empirical research on prosecution remains underdeveloped. This is particularly true at the intersection of pretrial detention and prosecution. Prosecutors can exert great influence over case outcomes when individuals are detained pretrial. The negative experiences of pretrial detention and the collateral consequences experienced for even brief jail stays provide strong leverage for prosecutors during plea negotiations. However, many detained individuals are only held due to an inability to meet financial release conditions. Consequently, poor and marginalized defendants may receive less favorable treatment in the American court system. The proposed study examines the nature and extent to which plea bargaining practices are shaped by defendant bail status; it investigates the jurisdictional variation that exists in these practices across place and considers their broader ramifications for issues of inequality in the criminal legal system.

To address these issues, we will link data on bail decisions, bail postings, charges filed, charges convicted, and cases sentenced across the 67 counties in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Doing so allows for a rare investigation of how the nature of plea agreements – including the likelihood and magnitude of plea discounts and one’s subsequent placement within sentencing guidelines – is affected by pretrial bail processes.  We investigate the relationship between bail status and plea bargaining and examine how it varies across diverse, local court contexts, paying particular attention to how this can contribute to cumulative disadvantages among marginalized social and racial groups in society. In addition to quantitative analysis of geographical variation in bail and charging practices, we employ a mixed methods approach that draw on interviews with prosecutors in select jurisdictions to better contextualize and interpret our findings.

Empirical research on prosecution and its potential contribution to punishment disparity is increasingly vital, especially in concert with efforts to reform bail processes in varying jurisdictions. The current study fills an important gap by linking these two issues in order to provide insights into evidence-based practices for reducing inequality in the justice system. To achieve this, we are deeply committed to working with local stakeholders to disseminate our findings to the public and to policymakers by sharing final reports, providing jurisdiction-specific research summaries, utilizing university resources and private companies to translate our findings, and by pursuing open access academic publications and public data archiving. CA/NCF