Neighborhood Context and the Pretrial Process: Do Defendants Face Adverse Outcomes Due to Their Home Address?

• Date: 01 December 2020
• Published date: 01 December 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0887403419890124
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0887403419890124

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2020, Vol. 31(9) 1340 –1365

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0887403419890124

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Article

Neighborhood Context and

the Pretrial Process: Do

Defendants Face Adverse

Outcomes Due to Their

Home Address?

Stacie St. Louis1

Abstract

When extralegal factors correlate with differences in bond amount and pretrial

detention, justice may be compromised. Prior research has identified disparity

related to defendant characteristics, such as income and race. This article offers

insight into a less explored source of disparity, neighborhood context, and a

particularly disadvantaged population, defendants, or pretrial detainees, unable to

afford their bail in court and booked into a county jail. Considering the desire for

community safety, the difficulty of predicting dangerousness and court attendance,

and the impact of ecological factors on other court outcomes, it is hypothesized that

neighborhood context heightens disparity in the pretrial process. Findings support

this argument. Offense elements best predict bond amount; however, there exists

disparity based on neighborhood characteristics. When assessing the same factors in

relation to detention length, bond amount is not significant, but rather individual- and

neighborhood-level characteristics. Implications are discussed in light of current bail

reform efforts.

Keywords

bail, pretrial detention, extralegal effects, neighborhood context

While the United States maintains a presumption of innocence, concerns have been

raised regarding the cash bail system and, particularly, that pretrial detention punishes

1Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Stacie St. Louis, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University, Churchill Hall, 360

Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

Email: st.louis.s@husky.neu.edu

890124CJPXXX10.1177/0887403419890124Criminal Justice Policy ReviewSt. Louis

research-article2019

St. Louis 1341

innocent people. For decades, bail decisions have revolved around two interests,

including (a) the perceived safety risk that the defendant poses to the community, and

(b) the perceived likelihood that the defendant will return for future court appearances

(Goldkamp & Gottfredson, 1985). Assessing defendants’ dangerousness and court

attendance, however, is a difficult task. As evidence is still being collected in the pre-

trial period, many decisions are made with incomplete information (Albonetti, 1989;

Nagel, 1983), involving “highly subjective evaluations” (Demuth, 2003, p. 881). For

instance, in a qualitative study of interviews with judges, one judge described the pre-

trial stage as the “toughest” because “you really don’t know a lot about the case so you

have to consider as much information as you have in front of you and, um, do your

best” (Clair & Winter, 2016, p. 345).

Most research on pretrial decisions focuses on individual-level defendant charac-

teristics (e.g., race or income) and their contribution to disparity. Although valuable,

one must remember that individuals do not exist in a vacuum—They are situated in

communities that vary in their cultural norms and levels of social (dis)advantage.

Ecological characteristics are well integrated into the literature, explaining individual

offending and differences in crime rates across communities (e.g., DuBois, 1899;

Sampson et al., 1997; Shaw & McKay, 1942). In addition, over the past decade, more

scholars have examined the impact of neighborhood-level characteristics on court pro-

cesses, such as sentencing outcomes (Rodriguez, 2013; Wooldredge, 2007). Just as

neighborhood context—specifically, concentrated disadvantage, residential stability,

and racial/ethnic homogeneity—affects other criminal justice outcomes, it may

heighten the already problematic levels of disparity in the cash bail system.1 For exam-

ple, as there are greater criminal opportunities in socially disorganized neighborhoods

(e.g., Shaw & McKay, 1942), court actors may consider the neighborhood as a risk

factor in determining defendants’ likelihood of reoffending. Moreover, court actors

may deem defendants from a socially disorganized neighborhood more dangerous

(Kutateladze et al., 2014; Wooldredge et al., 2016). Alternatively, court actors may

treat defendants who reside in socially organized communities more harshly as they

are perceived to threaten the social order within affluent communities (J. H. Williams

& Rosenfeld, 2016). As such, there is reason to believe that neighborhood characteris-

tics affect pretrial decisions, including bond amount and pretrial detention length.

Achieving a better understanding of disparity in the pretrial process is essential.

Defendants held in pretrial detention are legally innocent and face a host of challenges

when removed from their families, homes, communities, jobs, and society. Examples

of this include (a) being held in a dangerous environment with an increased chance of

victimization (Appleman, 2012), (b) uninhabitable living conditions due to jail over-

crowding (Appleman, 2012; Petteruti & Walsh, 2008), (c) heightened physical and

mental health issues (Noonan, 2016; Petteruti & Walsh, 2008; Zeng, 2019), (d) loss of

employment (Wiseman, 2013) alongside administrative fees and consequences for

missing payments (Appleman, 2012; Diller, 2010), and finally, (e) their children being

put into foster care (Petteruti & Walsh, 2008). Moreover, recent research has high-

lighted that being detained pretrial negatively affects subsequent case outcomes

(Dobbie et al., 2018; Goulette et al., 2015; Gupta et al., 2016; Heaton et al., 2017;