Increase in Jail Inmates Driven by Pretrial Detention

U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to eliminate cashless bail policies in Washington D.C. and across the country as part of his wider crackdown on crime. Cashless, or non-monetary, bail allows judges to release defendants awaiting trial without requiring them to post money. This often comes with conditions such as electronic monitoring and cashless bail is rarely applied in violent offense cases. Reform advocates say that traditional bail is flawed as it criminalizes poverty.

Several jurisdictions have moved away from cash bail in recent years. Washington, D.C., largely eliminated the practice under the 1992 Bail Reform Act, while states such as New York, Illinois and Alaska have also passed their own bail reforms.

On Monday, Trump signed an executive order to withhold federal funding from jurisdictions that have scrapped paid bail, citing public safety. “When these individuals are released without bail under city or state policies, they are permitted - even encouraged - to further endanger law-abiding, hard-working Americans because they know our laws will not be enforced”, the order read. The move follows his earlier decision this month to direct the National Guard to take over the policing of Washington D.C.

But local pretrial data conflicts with the order's claims. In Washington, D.C., 94 percent of defendants were released pretrial without having to pay money for bail in 2019. Of these, 99 percent were not rearrested for a violent crime while awaiting trial. Similar figures were recorded in the four preceding years which were also studied.

Meanwhile, jails in the U.S. are already running at high capacity and are overburdened. Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that pretrial detentions are a key driver of jail inmate growth, with the number of people held before trial having risen from 127,059 in 1985 to 467,528 by 2023 (latest available data), an increase of 268 percent. By comparison, the number of convicted individuals in jail rose from 123,409 to 196,617 in the same period, an increase of 59 percent. While inmate populations dipped during the Covid pandemic, they have started to climb again.

According to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, more than 60 percent of defendants in pretrial detention were there at the time of research because they could not afford to post bail, with Black and Latinx individuals more likely to face higher financial conditions of release.