I thank the Criminal Justice Section of the Association of American Law Schools for honoring this work as the First Runner-Up in the 2017 Junior Scholars Paper Competition. For their thoughtful comments and feedback, I am grateful to Laura Appleman, Shima Baradaran Baughman, Todd Berger, Keith Bybee, Michael Cahill, Nicolas Commandeur, Jessica Eaglin, Nicole Smith Futrell, Cynthia Godsoe, Russell Gold, Nina Kohn, Corinna Lain, Kate Levine, Sandy Mayson, Janet Moore, Lauren Ouziel, Ellen Podgor, Anna Roberts, Laurent Sacharoff, Tim Schnacke, Jocelyn Simonson, Cora True-Frost, and Sam Wiseman. Thank you also to the participants in the NYC Markelloquium at Brooklyn Law School; the participants in the 2016 AALS Hot Topics program, “Responding to the Money Bail Crisis”; the participants in CrimFest 2016 at Cardozo Law School; and the participants in the Junior Scholars Criminal Justice Roundtable at Brooklyn Law School and St. John’s University School of Law. With much appreciation also to Hillary Anderson, S. Alex Berlucchi, Jordan Charnetsky, Irem Karacal, David Katz, Amy Rhinehardt, and Erin Shea for outstanding research assistance. I am also indebted to Kyle Jorstad, Pat Ward, Carly Gibbs, John McAdams, Eian Katz, and the other editors of The University of Chicago Law Review for their insightful suggestions.
The number of low-risk defendants who spend time in pretrial detention in this country is staggering: “Every year, more than 11 million people move through America’s 3,100 local jails, many on low-level, non-violent misdemeanors.”
