Policymaking and pretrial fairness: Evaluating Illinois' ban on cash bail beyond Chicago

Abstract

Over 400,000 people are incarcerated awaiting trial each day in the United States. Many of these individuals are held because they are unable to post cash bail, generating substantial economic inequality between those who are able to be released and those who must wait. Illinois's Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA) banned cash bail in 2023 to reduce economic inequity and remove judicial discretion in pretrial decisions. I use daily roster data from multiple suburban and rural Illinois jails and a regression-discontinuity-in-time (RDiT) approach to test for changes to jail composition after the law went into effect. Jail population sizes decreased, though less than might be expected relative to the total size of the jail. Individuals held in jail post-PFA are more likely to be held on violent offenses and less likely to be women. I find no change in the percentage of the jail roster comprised of people of color, suggesting that while fewer people of color were held pre-trial, the law did not accomplish its goal of reducing racial inequity in pretrial detention. These findings indicate that while banning cash bail did reduce jail populations, it was not a panacea for addressing inequity in the criminal-legal system.