A tale of two counties: the impact of pretrial release, race, and ethnicity upon sentencing decisions

Pretrial release is clearly an important issue for defendants, since the results of previous research has suggested that pretrial release or detention can have an effect on later processing decisions. Additionally, race and ethnicity have been identified as factors in processing decisions in American courts. The current study is an analysis of a sample of felony filings in two Florida counties during 1998. Two dependent variables are considered: type of sentence (incarceration or another sentence) and the actual length of incarceration. The purpose of the analysis is to detect whether pretrial release remains a significant predictor of sentence type and length after controlling for legal and extra-legal variables. Specifically, we are interested in whether pretrial release has a differential impact on Hispanic and non-white defendants compared to whites. Defendants held pending trial faced significant disadvantages compared to their released peers in all models, but race and ethnicity did not appear to be universally contributing factors. Significant differences between the counties suggest that smaller-scale studies have the potential to uncover local and regional variations within state criminal justice systems that multi-state studies fail to capture.