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Predicting Violence, Shima Baradaran

Shima Baradaran

The last several years have seen a marked rise in state and federal pretrial detention rates. There has been very little scholarly analysis of whether increased detention is reducing crime, and the discussion that has taken place has largely relied on small scale local studies with conflicting results. This article asks whether the United States is making substantially mistaken judgments about who is likely to commit crimes while on pretrial release and whether we are detaining the right people. Relying on the largest dataset of pretrial defendants in the U.S., this article determines what factors, if any, are relevant in …