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A Meta-Analytic Review of Pretrial Research: Risk Assessment, Bond Type, and Interventions

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Abstract

This study makes an attempt to aggregate what we currently know about pretrial decision making and jurisdictions’ responses to the pretrial population. This meta-analysis began with an exhaustive search for pretrial research which may have revealed the most prominent finding—that being a distinct lack of research that utilizes any amount of methodological rigor. The findings of this meta-analysis hold several policy implications for the field of pretrial research and practice. First, future research studies in the field of pretrial need to focus on methodological quality and rigor. Second, it appears that some conditions of release may be related to a defendant’s likelihood of failure to appear. Third, it appears that none of the conditions of release reviewed in this study are related to a defendant’s likelihood of re-arrest while on pretrial release. Finally, it is recommended that the field of pretrial develop a sound research agenda and execute that plan with rigor, transparency, and an approach that favors the continued cumulation of knowledge. Strong conclusions about the impact of pretrial release conditions cannot be made as the quality of the pretrial research, overall, is weak at best.

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Notes

  1. The Criminal Justice Abstracts database was queried to return articles where the term “pretrial” appeared in the article title or article abstract. Additional query parameters limited the records returned to those that appeared in peer-reviewed academic journals and that were written in the English language.

  2. For a detailed description of pretrial blanket conditions, see VanNostrand et al., 2011.

  3. Housing and shelter assistance as well as sex offender programming and computer monitoring were other alternatives to detention reviewed for this study, but due to the low sample sizes, the effectiveness of these alternatives to detention could not be properly examined (VanNostrand & Keebler, 2009).

  4. Three studies account for 93 % of these data.

  5. For instance, defendants that were required to post a secured bond would be considered the treatment group while those defendants that were not required to post a secured bond would be considered the comparison group. Similarly those defendants that were required to participate in pretrial supervision was considered to be the treatment group whereas those defendants that were not required to participate in pretrial supervision was considered the comparison group. These designations are simply for clarity and for the sake of making effect size calculations and speak nothing to the substance of the conditions experienced by the defendants.

  6. This can roughly be interpreted as a 7 % reduction in failure to appear rates.

  7. Given that the effect size for arrest/combined as an outcome was not significant, this procedure was not necessary. Likewise, the effect size for predicting FTA was below the threshold selected for a trivial effect size.

  8. Authors of reports that did not contain the statistics necessary to calculate effect sizes were contacted to request that information.

  9. See for instance the growth in publications on cognitive behavioral interventions where there are over 1100 studies in a shorter time span than the time taken to produce just over 300 studies on pretrial.

  10. The APA’s Publication Manual also encourages authors to include effect sizes even though the reporting of samples sizes, statistical tests, and p-values usually provides the information necessary to calculate an effect size.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Crime and Justice Institute at Community Resources for Justice, Boston, MA, USA

    Kristin Bechtel

  2. Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, University of Missouri Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, USA

    Alexander M. Holsinger

  3. Administrative Office of the US Courts, Probation and Pretrial Services Office, Washington, DC, USA

    Christopher T. Lowenkamp

  4. Crime and Justice Institute at Community Resources for Justice, Boston, MA, USA

    Madeline J. Warren

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  1. Kristin Bechtel
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  2. Alexander M. Holsinger
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  3. Christopher T. Lowenkamp
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  4. Madeline J. Warren
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Correspondence to Christopher T. Lowenkamp.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and do not reflect the official position of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

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Bechtel, K., Holsinger, A.M., Lowenkamp, C.T. et al. A Meta-Analytic Review of Pretrial Research: Risk Assessment, Bond Type, and Interventions. Am J Crim Just 42, 443–467 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-016-9367-1

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