Report Submitted: 2023

By: Christopher P. Dum, PhD, Elias Nader, PhD, and Starr Solomon, PhD

Introduction

In the criminal justice system, bail and pretrial detention are used to ensure that individuals appear for subsequent court proceedings. According to the Ohio Revised Code section 2937.22, bail operates as a security for an accused to appear and answer to a specific criminal or quasi-criminal charge in court. Bail allows defendants to secure their release by entering into an agreement with the court to pay money in order to be released, or to pay if they do not return for court proceedings. In Ohio, individuals are commonly released on bail in one of several ways. The first is called a recognizance bond/released on own recognizance (ROR) in which a person makes a promise to come back to court and does not have to pay money up front. However, the person agrees to pay a bail amount to the court if they do not return. Cash bail is used when an individual or someone acting on their behalf pays the entire amount of bail to the court in exchange for release. In many cases, an individual is not able to raise the entire cash bail amount, and therefore must secure a bail bond. Bail bonds are obtained by paying a percentage of the bail amount (usually 10%) to the court or third-party bail bondsman, who then provides insurance to the court in the full bail amount.

The Ohio Revised Code section 2937.222 advises judges to make bail decisions based on several factors including the offense, weight of the evidence, characteristics of the accused (e.g., character, mental and physical conditions, employment, family ties, past conduct, community ties) and risk to public safety. Judges cannot deny bail unless they find “clear and convincing evidence that the proof is evident or the presumption great that the accused committed the offense, finds by clear and convincing evidence that the accused poses a substantial risk of serious physical harm to any person or to the community, and finds by clear and convincing evidence that no release conditions will reasonably assure the safety of that person and the community.” If a person is denied bail or if they cannot pay cash bail or secure a bail bond, then they are placed in pretrial detention in a county jail.

The use of bail and pretrial detention has drawn increased attention due to concerns about socioeconomic inequality in bail decisions and about the conditions of confinement for those in pretrial detention. On any given day in the United States, 60% of the approximately 744,600 people in jail are being held pretrial, and 90% of pretrial detainees had bail amounts set, but could not pay for their release (Scott-Hayward & Fradella, 2019). Those in jail have median incomes of less than half of those not incarcerated of similar ages, and most people who fail to meet bail requirements come from the most impoverished third of society (Rabuy & Kopf, 2016).

Pretrial detention has several negative effects on individuals and exacerbates existing problems (Subramanian et al., 2015). People detained pretrial suffer loss of employment, housing, and access to family and children (Heaton et al., 2017; Pelvin, 2017; Rabinowitz, 2010). Such adverse effects can be seen even after small amounts of time in jail, such as three days (Dobbie et al., 2018). Detained defendants also “(1) have increased incentives to plead guilty, including potentially overwhelming incentives; (2) cannot effectively prepare a defense; (3) have reduced financial resources for defense. (4) cannot demonstrate positive behavior; (5) cannot obstruct the prosecution; and (6) lack the advantage of long delay” (Heaton et al., 2017:722).

In light of these concerns, this study examines the effects of bail and pretrial detention on individuals who were arrested in the state of Ohio. Our goal is to provide policymakers with an understanding of “if” and “how” pretrial detention affects Ohioans in ways observed in other parts of the United States. Therefore, this study will answer the following questions: What are the effects of pretrial detention on life course outcomes for Ohioans? Specifically, what areas of life (e.g., employment, social bonds, health conditions) are affected and how are these effects experienced by those involved?

By examining how Ohioans experience the effects of bail and pretrial detention, we demonstrate the impact of these criminal justice policies in the state of Ohio. Our goal is to inform and guide policy makers so they can make evidence-based decisions about how to use bail and pretrial detention in the state of Ohio. We begin by examining the current research on the effects of cash bail and pretrial detention in the United States.

Review of the Literature

Pains of Imprisonment and Jail Conditions

The five pains/deprivations of imprisonment described by Gresham Sykes in 1958 offer a solid theoretical grounding through which we can better understand the experiences of pretrial detention (Sykes, 1958). These are the pains/deprivation of liberty, autonomy, goods and services, security, and heterosexual relationships. Sykes finds that all these pains/deprivations create psychological stress, and several can create physical harm (such as the deprivation of security and the deprivation of certain goods and services).

Sykes’ five pains/deprivations of imprisonment are present not just in prison, but in jail as well. Because of this, people in pretrial detention experience pains and deprivations of imprisonment even though they have not been found guilty of a crime (Anderson et al., 2021). Furthermore, local jails are often more punitive and hostile than prisons (Scott-Hayward & Fradella, 2019). People who are detained pretrial are more likely to plead guilty in favor of a plea deal (Heaton et al., 2017; Petersen, 2020) and the conditions of jail may incentivize this early pleading (Subramanian et al., 2015) because they can’t deal with psychological stressors of confinement (Pelvin, 2017; Rabinowitz, 2010). In sum, pretrial detention is short-term imprisonment that is painful in many ways (Anderson et al., 2021). Therefore, in this section we focus on deprivation of security and deprivation of goods and services in the form of healthcare, because they are the most acute and tangible pains of pretrial detention.

The deprivation of security is undeniable, as individuals in jail face assaults as one put it: going about daily life “trying not to die” (Keyser, 2021). From July 1, 2018, to June 30, 2019, correctional facilities in the U.S. experienced over 47,000 prisoner-on-prisoner assaults (Maruschak & Buehler, 2021a). Of these, over 9,500 resulted in serious injury (Maruschak & Buehler, 2021a). In 2018, jails in the U.S. reported 1,242 alleged sexual assaults by incarcerated individuals on other incarcerated individuals, with 20 of them reported in the state of Ohio (Maruschak & Buehler, 2021b). In 2017, these numbers were 1,145 nationally, with 20 in Ohio (Maruschak & Buehler, 2021b).

This victimization can be long lasting and tragic, such as the case of Kalief Browder who could not afford his $3,000 bond, and subsequently spent three years in Riker’s Island. During his stay, he was assaulted many times by guards and other confined individuals, spent almost two years in solitary confinement, and attempted suicide five times (Gonnerman, 2016). His charges were eventually dismissed, but Browder hung himself after his release. This tragic outcome (combined with the knowledge of what Browder experienced in jail under the presumption of innocence for charges that were dropped) led to significant changes in the operation of Riker’s Island, such as an end to solitary confinement for youth and the transfer of youth under 18 to a separate complex (Weiser, 2019). The case also galvanized significant public outcry and attention to jail conditions, cash bail, and pretrial detention.

The deprivation of goods and services is felt starkly in terms of access to healthcare. A quarter of people in jail enter with a recent history of serious psychological distress and almost half have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder (Bronson & Berzofsky, 2017). In 2015, Ohio prisons held 10 times as many individuals with mental illness than the state’s psychiatric hospitals (Johnson, 2015). Unfortunately, it is well known that jails lack the ability to provide mental and physical health care (Anderson et al., 2021; James & Glaze, 2006; Keyser, 2021; Steadman et al., 2009) mainly due to a shortage of trained staff (Herman, 2019) and a reliance on local county funding. A report by Vera Institute found that 83% of people with mental illness in jail do not receive treatment after admission (Subramanian et al., 2015). In midyear 2019, only 63% of correctional facilities in the United States had psychological/psychiatric counseling programs (Maruschak & Buehler, 2021a). When programs are available, lack of staffing and funding often means prisoners end up on long wait lists to enter the program (Ring & Gill, 2017).

This lack of treatment, combined with the stress resulting from the deprivations of security, liberty, and autonomy, can lead to disastrous outcomes inside jail. In 2015, Sandra Bland was arrested after a traffic stop and placed in a Texas jail. Unable to pay $500 to a bail bondsman, Bland died of suicide three days later. Dashawan Carter, who missed close to 100 medical appointments while detained in Riker’s Island, died by suicide in his cell just days after release from a psychiatric hospital.

Employment and Pretrial Detention

Prior research shows that pretrial detention affects many areas of life. Perhaps the most pressing is the issue of employment. For obvious reasons, an individual cannot work if they are detained in jail. This creates an immediate loss of income, which hurts the individual and can also negatively impact family members who rely on that income to survive (Keyser, 2021). The pressure to keep a job may incentivize pleading guilty or taking a plea deal in exchange for release, even if a person is innocent (Edkins & Dervan, 2018). Unfortunately, those who are detained “almost always lose their jobs” (Rabinowitz, 2010:113) and any loss of income as the result of pretrial detention can increase the likelihood of conviction because individuals are not earning money that could be spent on their defense (Heaton et al., 2017; Subramanian et al., 2015). Furthermore, work is a prosocial activity that individuals can use to show positive engagement in society. Such behavior can help in a person’s defense and sentencing, but individuals who lose their jobs due to pretrial detainment therefore lose this important positive credential (Keyser, 2021).

Moreover, research shows that pretrial detention has adverse effects on employment even years later because individuals must find new jobs (Dobbie et al., 2018).Those detained also miss out on other opportunities to advance careers, attend school, and build social capital, all of which can affect their future earnings (Dobbie et al., 2018; Pelvin, 2017; Rabinowitz, 2010). If convicted, a criminal record can carry a stigma which affects job prospects and benefits like unemployment and the earned income tax credit (Dobbie et al., 2018).

Social Consequences of Pretrial Detention

Those who are released on their own recognizance or able to raise funds to pay their bail benefit in several ways compared to those who are detained. Those released before trial are better able to maintain social bonds compared to those in pretrial detention (Anderson et al., 2021). In the worst-case scenario, a parent may lose custody of their child as a result of being detained (Wildeman, 2013). When someone is detained pretrial, this can contribute to the disintegration of social networks, which can further marginalize individuals on the fringes of society (Anderson et al., 2021). There is also a concern that pretrial detention can undermine an individual’s sense of procedural justice and increase skepticism of the criminal justice system, as well as decrease belief in its legitimacy (Anderson et al., 2021). In sum, people who enter jail with “something to lose” often do in fact, lose it (Anderson et al., 2021:25).

Dobbie (2018) finds that people released pretrial are less likely to be convicted, mainly because they are less likely to plead guilty. This happens for a few reasons. First, people who know they are at risk of losing things like employment and social bonds because of pretrial detention may take pleas (Heaton et al., 2017; Phillips, 2012; Subramanian et al., 2015). Second, being detained makes it harder to meet with counsel (Subramanian et al., 2015), and harder to gather evidence and contact witnesses (Heaton et al., 2017) in order to prepare a defense. Finally, pretrial release helps the accused show prosecutors and judges all the positive things they are doing like working, going to school, helping family, etc. (Heaton et al., 2017; Keyser, 2021; Phillips, 2012; Subramanian et al., 2015) which could benefit them in terms of sentencing or making a plea deal.

From a legal perspective, pretrial detention puts individuals at a clear disadvantage in the trial process even before a determination of guilt because it weakens both the ability to fight their case as well as their negotiation positions for plea bargaining (Dobbie et al., 2018). Pretrial detention is therefore a powerful prosecutorial tool, because of the negative consequences that it has on the accused. Research finds that detainees plead guilty 2.86 times faster than those released pretrial, when controlling for other factors (Petersen, 2020).

Current Study

While previous research paints a bleak picture of bail and pretrial detention in the United States, our goal in this study is to provide analysis specific to the State of Ohio. By examining how Ohioans experience pretrial detention or release, we can provide policymakers with a better understanding of how pretrial detention or release operates in Ohio. Therefore, in order to inform policy in Ohio, this study examines the following research question: What are the effects of pretrial detention on life course outcomes for Ohioans? Specifically, what areas of life (e.g., employment, social bonds, health conditions) are affected and how are these effects experienced by those involved?

To answer that question, we conducted interviews with individuals who have been arrested in the state of Ohio to see how their experiences do or do not correspond with the state of the literature. In the next section, we discuss our methods of data collection and give more details about our sample.

Data and Methods

Data Collection

This study is not just concerned with whether Ohioans experience pretrial detention/release in similar ways to others in the United States, but also how these experiences play out. Therefore, qualitative interviews are an excellent way to explore the details of these experiences. A plethora of researchers have successfully employed qualitative interviews to study issues related to criminal justice and incarceration (e.g., Braman, 2004; Christian, 2005; Christian et al., 2006; Wakefield & Wildeman, 2013). Interviews are useful because they allow observation of how people experience events and, in a sense, interviews rescue the experiences of events that would otherwise be lost (Weiss, 1994). Interviews produce narrative data which researchers use “for the express purpose of understanding people’s interpretations of their world” (Presser, 2008:9).

The interviews in this study accomplish the following: 1) provide detailed descriptions of experiences with pretrial detention/release, 2) describe the process of pretrial detention/release 3) describe how the events around pretrial detention/release are interpreted, and 4) develop more holistic description of the effects of pretrial detention/release on individuals in Ohio (Weiss, 1994).

The population for this study was individuals who had been arrested as adults in the state of Ohio. All the methods used to recruit participants and collect data were approved by the Kent State University Institutional Review Board. In order to recruit participants, the investigators began employing several strategies in September of 2022. First, the investigators sent emails to contacts who had been arrested in Ohio as adults. These emails encouraged individuals to learn about the study as well as pass on the study information to anyone who they thought would be interested. Second, the investigators contacted organizations in the state of Ohio who are directly or indirectly involved with returned citizens and asked them to share information about the study with their networks. Examples of these organizations include the Ohio Prison Arts Connection, Church and Community Development for All People, and the Ohio Prison Education Exchange. In total, the investigators contacted 31 Ohio organizations. The investigators also contacted 3 national organizations with connections to returned citizens. Because Facebook support groups are a popular resource for individuals connected to the justice system, the investigators also posted information about the study in 13 Facebook groups for individuals involved with the justice system.

Individuals interested in the study contacted the investigators via email and phone. The investigators then emailed each interested individual a copy of the study consent form and instructed the person to reach out to the investigators if they consented to participate in the study and wanted to schedule an interview.

Participants were given the option of having interviews conducted over Zoom, telephone, or in person. At the onset of each interview, participants chose a pseudonym and decided to consent to audio/video recording of the interview. These pseudonyms are used in this report and all locations have been altered to protect the privacy of our participants. All our participants consented to the recording of the interview. Interviews ranged from 13 minutes to 1 hour and 34 minutes in length, and covered topics relating to experiences with arrest, and experiences with pretrial detention or pretrial release. The interview guide is available in the Appendix. After completing the interview, each participant was sent a $20 Amazon electronic gift card. Audio recordings were then transcribed using the AI transcription service Otter AI, and then reviewed and edited for accuracy.

Sample

Our sample consists of 15 individuals, who collectively experienced 29 arrests. Demographics of the participants are available in Table 1, while details of the charges they faced are in Table 2. The age of the sample ranges from 30 to 72 and is almost evenly split by those who identify as male or female. Two thirds of the sample identify as White.

In terms of the crimes that individuals were arrested for, they range from driving under the influence to aggravated murder. While many experienced being released on recognizance, others were given bail amounts that ranged from $300 to $1,000,000, which they could or could not pay. While some participants experienced only 1 arrest, others experienced up to 5 arrests as adults in Ohio.

For qualitative research projects, data collection stops when the project reaches theoretical saturation, meaning that new data does not provide new insights or answers to the research question. Research shows that theoretical saturation can be achieved in as few as 6 interviews (Roy et al., 2015), although 15-30 is a common finding (Charmaz, 2006; Lofland et al., 2006; Marshall et al., 2013). However, for the purposes of this study, our unit of analysis is a specific arrest experience and not the individual. Therefore, after analyzing the 29 arrest experiences in our data, it was clear that theoretical saturation had been reached and data collection was stopped.

Data Analysis

The coding and data analysis process was guided by the overall goal of providing an understanding of “if” and “how” pretrial detainment affects Ohioans in ways seen in other locations. Coding qualitative data involves reading, thinking about, questioning, and labeling data. A researcher will look at a piece of data, ask a question about what is occurring, and then turn the question into a word or phrase that captures what is going on (Emerson et al., 1995). This organizes data into categories that make it meaningful and pertinent to a topic, question, or answer (Lofland et al., 2006).

Because our interview guide was designed in order to touch on areas of life that previous literature had identified as impacted by pretrial detention, these became a set of predetermined codes. These areas are: employment, health, experiences inside jail, finances, and social bonds. Therefore, in the first round of coding, we reviewed the data for each unique arrest experience and then assessed how the decision to detain or release the individual affected the areas of life identified by previous literature. In this deductive analysis, every piece of data that related to one of the areas was then assigned the appropriate code. In the second round of coding, we reviewed each arrest experience again using an inductive approach. This inductive approach did not rely on predetermined codes, but rather looked for new topics that did not fit the areas defined previously. Any piece of data not already coded into the predetermined areas of life was assigned a code that best described the topic it was describing.

In the next section, we use these interview data and participant narratives to describe how pretrial detention and release are experienced by Ohioans in several areas of life. We begin by examining how participants experienced being assigned a cash bail amount.

Results

Bail Decisions

Paying Bail

Several of our participants were fortunate enough to have financial resources themselves, or family members who could pay their bail so they could be released. For instance, Mike told the interviewer that his bail for one arrest was set at $25,000 and his mother was able to go to his room and get the 10% cash deposit required to bail him out.

Another example is JG, who was married at the time and whose wife posted the $1,000 required to bail him out. In this instance, JG was fortunate that he and his wife had the finances to not only pay bail, but also to hire an attorney to guide them through the process of paying for JG’s release. He explained:

It was okay on the family finances. I think it was just the, that more the stress of having to figure out, you know, we, we don't have a lot of background working with bail bondsmen. It's something new for my wife. And she, we had retained an attorney. So I think he kind of, yeah, he kind of helped, you know, tell her where to go and all that.

Other individuals had similar stable financial situations, like Logan, whose father was able to pay $500 to bail her out and it “didn’t affect his finances too much” because he was middle class. Elliot was facing a $100,000 bail amount for murder and his dad put up the money to bail him out after a few days. For Melissa, extended family were able to pay for her bail when it was set at $5,000. She said:

It was my son's father, that was my boyfriend at the time. I should say it was his family. I don't know that my mother actually contributed. But they, they owned a business, they owned a lumping business [loading and unloading shipments], they unloaded trucks. And they were paid with invoices and checks nightly. And then the next day, they were able to cash some of the checks they earned from the previous night. And they, you know, got me out that way. I just think my mom chipped in when it was my time to pay them back. Because I, you know, still wanted to pay them back.

Melissa was also fortunate that this family was understanding, as she explains:

They kind of have had their own dealings, like with one of their sons, you know, having been in and out of jail, so they were familiar with the process. And really, they were, you know, it was kind of just contingent upon the fact like, you know, hey, pay us back, we'll get you out. We know how stuff goes. But I think, you know, I was kind of embarrassed because, you know. People need help, sometimes, they need help, borrow money with bills and stuff. But when it is a bail you're like, it's kind of embarrassing, you know, but I was able, I think to pay them back within a week or so. So there was no friction caused. Now, it might have been different had I not been able to pay them back.

For Rob, his family was willing to pay for his release, but they were not as forgiving about the process due to the nature of his crime. Rob’s first arrest involved both a misdemeanor and a felony for crimes against a minor. The bail for the misdemeanor was set at $65,000. Rob’s family was able to afford a private attorney who fronted the 10% of the bond as part of his retainer. Rob said:

You know, we knew that we could probably expect to spend about $10,000 on the entire process, that was what we had in kind of our mind. And my grandparents, my grandparents, both sets of grandparents, and then my uncle, all kind of collaborated together over the course of the journey between Municipal Court and Common Pleas Court to say, okay, we'll each kick in 5,000 to help pay for the lawyer to make sure that the family attorney gets paid back the money he fronted.

However, the bail for his felony case was set at $100,000 and then increased to $300,000. Again, his family was able to raise the money to meet the bond requirement, but not without causing stress among several members as Rob says:

Yeah, there was, there was some drama. I think some of my family thought that they should let me sit [in jail]. Extended aunts and uncles, who were, who were, who were already struggling with the taboo nature of the offense. And like having the same last name as me being in the news, like my uncle's a doctor here in [LOCATION HIDDEN]. And grandma, my paternal grandmother knew it was the right thing to do. It was just a huge undertaking on her part to find that money all the while she was getting feedback on the fact that she should not be doing it.

As all these instances show, paying bail required strong social bonds who had financial resources and who were willing to use it to bail our participants out. As we will show however, that was not the case with many others in our sample.

Inability to Pay Bail

In many instances our participants faced bail payments that were impossible to meet. Cards told us that for one of his arrests, his bail was set at $1,000,000. Tommy’s second arrest resulted in a bail amount of $450,000 and his family was unable to pay, as he said, “the only options they had was to put you know, someone's house up or as collateral or stuff like that. And my mom and everyone was like, we don't have that kind of money.” Logan faced a similar situation, as she described:

My initial court date, I went in, and they gave me a ridiculously high bond, something that I didn't-. You know, my family would never be able to pay. And I was charged with four [felony] ones, six [felony] twos and four [felony] threes. For robbery. That is a lot. So we were terrified. You know, I was terrified. My family was terrified. I believe, at that time, my mother ended up getting into her 401k to be able to get me a lawyer, and I believe she spent $40,000 of money we did not have to get me a lawyer. Yeah, we would have never been able to post bail. I don't even think if we put our house up, wouldn't be able to, I don't, I don't even know.

When Melissa experienced her most recent arrest, the judge set her bail at $200,000. She recalled the experience, saying:

Oh, my God. So remember, remember, I told you I had the first time I was charged with felonious assault, I was crying about a $5,000 bond? This time, it was $200,000. So, I knew, I remember hearing that number that the judge set. And I said, yeah, I'm gonna have to, it's gonna be a long stay. I just knew at that time that there was no way, you know, at this point in time, because I've been in trouble a few times, my family's fed up. My son's father that initially helped my first case, we were no longer together. So that was out of the question. Plus, nobody, I mean, 10% of that was $20,000. It was just, no, I knew, I'm gonna have to sit this one out. There is no other option at this point. Even with bond reductions. You know, I think they lowered it down eventually, to 150,000. That still wasn't [low enough].

This section drives home the obvious fact that ample financial resources are key to getting released on bail. However, the key takeaway is that for most of our participants who were able to pay, the money came from family, partners, and even extended family. Therefore, individuals need to have strong social bonds with financially stable individuals in order to come up with bail payments. In the next section, we start to discuss the impacts of pretrial detention and release, beginning with the effects on employment.

Effects on Employment

Many of our participants were employed at the time of their arrest. For those individuals who were released on recognizance or were bailed out quickly, their employment situations did not suffer. For example, Tommy was bailed out hours after arrest, so he didn’t lose his job, and Jazzman worked at a used car business with his dad and was able to keep working on ROR. Similarly, Logan was employed at Sheetz at the time of her arrest, while Sarah was working as a server at a local restaurant when she was arrested. Both received an ROR so they didn’t miss any time at work. However, Sarah was waiting for an email with a time sensitive contract from a potential employer abroad and likely would have missed being able to sign the contract in time if she had been detained.

For those individuals who were employed but detained, for most of them this turn of events had a severe impact on their employment status. Cards was self-employed as a contractor and when he was arrested and detained over the summer, he lost out on $50,000 worth of work that he had lined up. Elliot had a similar experience. He was employed at a gas station and lost the job after being detained for several weeks, saying that the owner, “had to replace me, he couldn't keep the job open obviously, he had to fill the position.” Catherine was working at Denny’s 40 hours a week when she was arrested. However, after being detained for 60 days she lost her job. As a result of losing her job, Catherine could no longer afford her $600 monthly rent and was evicted.

There were several instances in which people were able to return to work after substantial time away, such as when Rob was detained for 12 days but able to return to his job in sales after being released. However, this was more due to a combination of good fortune and forgiving employers than anything else. For example, when Jazzman was arrested again and detained, he was working as a truck driver hauling steel and his employer was desperate for workers, so they took him back. He said, “I went right back to work there. And you know, they kept calling my wife. Is he getting out? Is he getting out? And you know, [I] get back to work. But, but, but if it was some other ordinary job somewhere, I'd have been moused. I'd have lost my job.”

For Melissa, her good work history and help from family to alert her employer to the situation helped keep her employed at Bob Evans where she had worked 40 hours a week. She said:

You know, obviously, they were, I'm not going to say like, oh, they weren't upset, like, you know, naturally, when somebody can't show up to work. They, you know, they get upset. But I did have my both my mother and my son's father called and explained the situation. And thankfully, I, you know, had a pretty good work ethic, and you know, a history of attendance. You know, so they didn't really ask me any questions, just told me to come in after, like, you know, when I got home.

The employment experiences of our participants make it clear that avoiding pretrial detention or having bail set low enough to be bailed out quickly were important factors that allowed people to keep their jobs. Conversely, substantial pretrial detention had dire effects on employment, and in Catherine’s case, the lost wages resulted in her eviction. In the next section, we discuss the experiences of people who were detained and how that affected their health.

Mental Health, Physical Health, and Pretrial Detention

A prevailing theme in our interviews concerned the lack of health care inside jails for both mental and physical ailments. Many of these issues revolved around access to medications. Melissa was dealing with mental health issues and was on medication for them when she was detained. However, she was denied access to them in jail and said:

Oh, it was rough. Especially when your body becomes accustomed to taking those medications. You know, what, when your body is working that stuff out of its systems, you know, yeah, you feel on edge, you can't sleep your, your, my, your appetite's messed up, I remember losing weight, which I quickly gained back because of the terrible food there. But you know, yeah, it was a bit. I've struggled with mental health problems since I was 14. So when you find a regimen of medicine that works to have that kind of stripped away, because of some ridiculous policy. Yeah, it was rough.

For Melissa, this lack of health care was shocking, and she recalled seeing a woman going through kidney failure because she was denied medications that she had on her at the time of her arrest:

And it was in her property, she actually was arrested with the medication. You know, and then the process, there's no intercom for you to call the guards, you have to bang on the door and hope that somebody's doing the rounds hears you. You know, there were girls going through detox that were soiling themselves and, you know, weren't getting any type- just, I mean, just no, very poor little to none medical care. That was the worst. I mean, because I understand we're in jail, it's not meant to be, you know, the Hyatt or like, you know, a vacation, but it's like on a basic human rights level. I think I was a little shocked at how it was like you are literally on your own. Hope you can make it out. Hope somebody raises enough hell on the outside that can actually get you you know, just medical care.

The experiences of withdrawal that Melissa mentions were something that Logan faced when she was arrested for the crime that would send her to prison. She said:

You know, I was super sick, withdrawing from drugs, nobody, you know, they didn't give me any sort of medication. I think they checked my blood pressure a few times. That is not, I was not given any health care for the withdrawal. You know, and you have one woman defecating in the shower because the withdrawals are so bad and some have seizures like and there's no medical attention for that. There was one girl on the bed and she was like talking to somebody who wasn't there, like she was hallucinating. There was other ladies that needed medical care that was not there.

Mike was also going through issues with drugs but said at the time he was detained the only treatment was to lock people up “and throw away the key.” Mental health issues, particularly anxiety and depression, were pervasive among our participants. At the time that Rob turned himself in, he was dealing with suicidality, taking a daily SSRI, and talking to a counselor every day. Once inside, getting Rob adequate mental health treatment was the driving force behind his family’s efforts to bail him out. Recall that earlier he discussed how his family was divided over whether they should bail him out or not. Rob said:

Yeah, so they didn't think that grandma should be fronting that amount of money. But my sister was like, you know, we can't let him sit in that jail. He's already deteriorating mentally. There are resources he's been exploring and will continue to explore, that will allow him to start pursuing wellness while he's fighting this case. So, you know, my sister helped support me in that regard. And grandma, my paternal grandmother knew it was the right thing to do. It was just a huge undertaking on her part to find that money all the while she was getting feedback on the fact that she should not be doing it.

Cards was also dealing with mental health issues and was put on medication for PTSD while in jail. He said the drugs failed to work and only made him gain weight and sleep, saying “so, that's how I got through the, the year in the county. So between my mental health and the meds, it was, it was driving me crazy.”

JG was dealing with undiagnosed anxiety and depression, but fortunately for him, he was bailed out after two days in jail. This was a real stroke of luck because he was able to get help in the community, saying, “You know, I was doing 12 Step groups, in addition to the therapy groups, so a whole lot of mental health related stuff, addiction related stuff.” When asked about what he would have faced in jail if he was detained until his trial he said, “So I think I probably just would have been really depressed. I would have not been able to really sort of get the treatment I needed.”

Melissa was on medication when she was detained and was denied access to them. She tried to get permission to have someone bring them but was denied. She told us:

They said you will have to be seen by the psychiatrist that works at the jail who of course, is only there Monday through Fridays, and there's one psychiatrist dealing with probably 1000 inmates. You know, I remember having like a severe panic attack. And I remember a couple of ladies banging on the door and everything and trying to get the guard’s attention and the guard showed up about an hour later.

For many participants, even if they weren’t dealing with a specific mental health issue, the experience of being detained before trial was psychologically distressing. Logan was only in jail for two days, but it had a profound effect on her. She said:

I remember. I remember having the thought, when I was released, that if I ever had to spend more than six months in prison or incarcerated, I would commit suicide. I remember thinking that. It was, at the time, it was the worst experience of my life. I was lost during incarceration. I was just super depressed. I stayed in my bed. I was terrified.

Melissa echoed that saying that jail was not an experience she “would wish on anybody” and Tommy called being in jail “anguish.” Cards told me that in addition to his PTSD:

I was going crazy by this time. I had somebody who, I mean, it's all type of stuff the COs was doing to you, all type of stuff the other, the inmates was doing to you. Like, you just really wanted to stay, I mean sometimes you, I will, you, you know like you would do stuff to get away from everybody. Like you want to, I don't know I wanted to go to solitary sometimes. Just to get away from people and what was going on. Like take me to a, a place where I can be alone. I don't care about how long you keep me in there, but I gotta. I wanna keep my mind. My own sanity and it was like unreal what was going on in there.

Mike had similar experiences during his time in jail. He said:

I’m gonna tell you something. Because like, I've seen guys, literally lose they mind in here. I'm talking about not a little bit, all the way. You know. So, me. One thing I found out in doing time, that's the most first most important thing you have to have together is your mind in there, because it's a it's a mental game, and people not that strong. You know, they had heard that, and they'd be like, I got this, but for real, they don't. So and you don't have, you don't have too many avenues to vent. Because everybody in there it seemed like is waiting on the opportunity to find a chink in your armor. Whether it's whether it's the officers or whether it's the inmates. Everybody trying to deal with you mentally, like play mental games with you.

The deprivations of health care while in pretrial detention led our participants to experience negative effects on both physical and mental health that have been well documented in the literature. Incarcerated individuals have substantial chronic health issues (Panisch et al., 2019), but as our sample indicated, it was a struggle to get treatment for these conditions. Similar to previous research on those in confinement, people in our sample who had mental health issues found them exacerbated due to lack of treatment (Subramanian et al., 2015). Others experienced intense negative effects on their mental health simply from the stressors of the environment, which some researchers have described as “almost diabolically conceived to force the offender to experience the pangs of what many psychiatrists would describe as mental illness” (Quandt & Jones, 2021).

Pleas to Escape Conditions

We mentioned earlier how the conditions of jail are painful deprivations. Previous literature has shown that people take plea deals in order to escape these conditions of jail, even if it is not in their best interest (Edkins & Dervan, 2018). Cards was one participant who ended up pleading guilty to misdemeanor assault in order to get out of jail, even though he claimed he was innocent. He said:

But the thing is, is they dropped everything in exchange for me pleading guilty to a misdemeanor assault, which was unfair, but I have been jailed so long, that it's like, when they give you these ultimatums, just a, look, we'll let you go home today, if you plead to this. Get me out of here. If I'm suffering through inhumane conditions, and they know that this place, you got people sleeping on the floor, and it's only one bed and you're the person on the floor in an eight by eight. When somebody uses the bathroom, like it's flashing on you and I mean, you're just ready to get out of here.

For Rob, he was fortunate to get bailed out but reflected that if he was kept in jail longer, “I think I probably would have pled out to a less favorable deal sooner, but that's part of the reason they allow it to be what they are. I probably would not have been able to hold out that long, I probably would have been ready for a deal sooner, just to get out of there.” Elliot echoed this when he said:

Jail is terrible. You know, I think the whole jail experience is designed to get you to plead guilty. I really think so. Because it's so horrible in there, that you'd do. You'd plead guilty just to go to the penitentiary because the penitentiary is much better than the jail. Well, I mean, just there's so many aspects of it, the food, the day- the daily grind of it, and you know, the people you deal with in there. It's just very terrible experiences. You know, comparing it to the penitentiary. For say, a penitentiary, you have things to do, you have a job, you gotta go out to the rec yard, all that kind of stuff. You have none of that stuff in there. You're just sitting there waiting. And, and, you know, they bring in people that, you know, are of all different crimes and different. You know, some of them are pretty wild in there. So there's a lot more violence, I think than than at the penitentiary. You know, because in a penitentiary guys are doing many years, so they really try to get along, for the most part. The people that are in for a short time, you know, there's no incentive for them to to try to get along with anybody.

Concerns about Safety

As Elliot alludes to, the deprivation of security and subsequent risk of physical harm are detrimental psychological stressors that individuals seek to escape through pleas. For Logan, being fearful of other women in jail had tangible effects on her. She said:

I was put in the tank with the women you know, I had no idea what to expect at the time. Looking back, the women, they were nice. But in my frame of mind, I was just so on guard and hyper vigilant like I didn't know what to expect. I know like one of them asked for my tray the next day. I know I didn't eat the entire time I was in there.

Our participants who were battling sexual offense charges, like Rob and JG, felt particularly vulnerable to attack. Rob worried because the general population of the jail was able to hear his charges and threatened him. He said:

But what the way that they did the indictments and read the arraignments the general population folks went after the sex offender tank went and so they heard my charges. And, you know, proceeded to go nuts after they were all back in their tank, and they were able to see me literally across the hallway, it was just not managed well at all. So that was one aspect of the survival piece.

JG only spent two days in jail before getting bailed out, but even those two days were harrowing because of threats against him. He said:

There was a guy I sort of talked to while I was there. And I was kind of just, you know, kind of walked the room in circles, and not really talked to many people. But, one guy at one point, because I was on the news that evening, that must have been, that must have been a Tuesday. He had told me that some of the other guys were talking about, you know, like jumping me or whatever. But, yeah. I'm scared. I was like, shit, you know?

This stranger told JG to go speak to the CO and even coached him about what to say to get into protective custody. JG said:

You know, I think he may have even given me sort of, you know, the, the words to say, like, you know, I'm frightened for my, my safety and my life. And, you know, my physical safety. And, you know, I was just told that someone was planning on jumping me. So yeah, he gave me a fair amount of, here's what they're gonna say. And so I did exactly what he told me and probably it wasn't very long. And it wasn't like right away, but it was probably within maybe an hour later, is when they moved me.

JG said if that guy had not helped him, “I mean, I probably would have gotten my ass kicked. I'm not a very big guy. Not a very physical guy. So yeah, I would imagine that night, something would have happened to me, in terms of, you know, getting beaten up or whatever.”

Jazzman also was facing a sex offense charge, but the only reason he didn’t fear for his safety was because he was older and had already been to prison and knew how to handle himself. He spent two months in a violent offender unit and said, “So I was in it with some, I was in there with some crazy guys. But I had already been locked up with crazy guys, and I already had, you know, survived that. I'm not afraid. I was 25 when I went to prison.”

Starlin found himself in a crowded room that he likened to a gymnasium and was immediately confronted by another man to give up his bed. He thought about fighting but decided to avoid confrontation. Overcrowding was an issue Elliot faced as well. He said, “Well, they were really overcrowded. So in each block they, each cell unit. I'm not sure the exact amount of cells, but I'm just gonna say like, they had 20 cells, but then they had 20 people sleeping on the floor on mats.”

Concerns About Social Bonds

Our literature review discussed how many individuals enter the justice system with “something to lose” whether it be jobs, connections to people, or connections to institutions (Anderson et al., 2021). In our sample, participants did lose or stand to lose important family and community connections while detained pretrial.

Individuals who did not experience pretrial detention, or only experienced short amounts, were able to maintain important social bonds to people and institutions. JG was bailed out after two days in jail, and this allowed him to be involved with his family more. He said, “I took my kids to school and all that,” and he was able to go to therapy with his wife, which he credits with saving his marriage.

Jazzman was arrested the night that he brought his newborn daughter home from the hospital. Luckily, he was released on recognizance, so he was able to still help his wife and new daughter for the 9 months it took for his case to resolve.

For individuals who were detained, they lost opportunities and social bonds. Catherine had a great relationship with her mom at the time of her arrest and said, “I mean, she was like the only one I could talk to. I'd visit her probably almost daily.” However, when Catherine was detained in jail, she lost that contact because her mother did not have transportation. Similarly, Melissa had a very young son when she was in jail, and she suffered being away from him for those few days.

Several individuals had connections with various community institutions that were affected by their release. Sarah was working on a doctoral dissertation and volunteering at a local prison and was able to continue doing those things upon release. She said that if she had been detained for too long, she would have lost her student status. Melissa was also in school and being released allowed her to continue with classwork. For Rob, once he was released, he was able to stay involved with music and arts organizations, which were a key part of his life and identity.

Detention as a Barrier to Legal Defense

Another strong theme that emerged from our data is that participants recognized how detrimental pretrial detention was to their ability to fight their case. Rob’s family took huge financial steps to bail him out because they knew that being kept in jail would hurt his ability to defend himself. He said:

And we knew that I would have a much better negotiation ability if I was not sitting in our horrible jail. So my grandmother, my grandmother pulled money out of essentially what would have been my inheritance and took out a life insurance policy on me to help pay back my student loan that she started paying for me when I was out of work.

While Rob was out, he and his family were able to hire private investigators and build a better defense, and he said, “But, you know, I don't think that we would have been able to do that amount of private investigating had I sat in jail.”

Elliot felt that if he had been released, he would have beaten his case altogether because there were things that he could have done to help his defense. He said:

You know, for, for one instance, I'll tell you, they all, they wanted to make it sound like I just bought a pistol to commit the crime, you know, which was not true. And, you know, one of the things she said was, she had never seen that pistol before. Well, I could have produced the receipt that had I been out on the streets, but I couldn't produce a receipt. That's just one example of something that, you know, would have gone more in my favor, had I been able to get out there and prepare defense better.

Instead, the court gave Elliot a bail amount so high that he knew he wouldn’t be able to pay, so he did not waive his right to a speedy trial because he did not want to stay in jail waiting for the case to resolve without being able to put up a good defense. He summed it up by saying:

If I would have made bond, I would have waived my right to a speedy trial, and it would have been nine months. But, you know, at that point, I didn't, I wasn't gonna make bond. There, there was no way I was gonna make the bond. So there was no sense in just sitting around there for nine months.

Tommy was not bailed out and felt this hurt his ability to even know what was going on with this case. He said:

And yes, see the only bit of information you could ever get as to what's happening with your case are the few times, I had a court appointed attorney. I saw him very, very minimally. You know, and it was, it was hell on the mind, just because, you know, he's apparently doing this stuff outside of there. So I, I'm not out to be able to keep track and know what's going- happening in the background. So when he would show up, he'd kind of fill me in on some stuff. And, you know, then, of course, you're sitting in there and you think of questions you want to ask. Well, then, you know, you're not going to see him for who knows, a week or two, or three, even sometimes. By that time, I'd forgotten what I was going to ask him.

Jazzman also felt that being out would have allowed him to help fight his case and at least be in contact with this lawyer. He said, “I was trying to talk to him to see about, you know, filing some motion to get them to lower the bond. He never once would come to see me. Not once.”

Jail as Treatment for Drug Addiction

One theme that did arise is how several participants felt that being detained after arrest helped keep them away from using drugs. Logan spent 4 months in jail at one point because she couldn’t pay bail. She said that if she had been bailed out, she would have gone right back to using drugs, saying, “So my addiction was so bad at that point in time. But I don't even think my family would have bailed me out if they could. Because my mother said that when I was in jail, she was able to sleep at night.” However, Logan did not receive any drug treatment in jail and said, “as soon as I got out, I was right back to my addiction.”

Tommy felt something similar about jail and his drug use when he told us, “So I like, I said I, in a lot of ways, I think it saved my life. But I didn't realize that till later, you know.” Mike said that if he was not detained, “I probably would have gotten low cases and did some other drugs,” because he wasn’t ready to be out.

Catherine was also struggling with drug addiction when she was first arrested and released. She said, “Honestly, I was doing a lot of stupid stuff [meaning drugs] out here. So I probably would have been better off in there.” When she finally was put in jail, Catherine said that if she had been left out, “I probably would have been doing what I shouldn't be doing [meaning drugs]. So honestly, being there was a good thing.”

While these experiences demonstrate that several participants felt pretrial detention was or would have been beneficial to them in terms of incapacitating them, it is key to note that all these instances involved drug addiction. As Mike mentioned previously, what he really needed was treatment, but none was offered to him. Therefore, the takeaway from these findings is that drug treatment is sorely needed in society and the criminal justice system.

Discussion

Our goal was to answer “if” the experiences of our Ohio participants mirror the experiences of others in the U.S., and if so, “how” does that occur? The answer to the first question is straightforward. Yes, Ohioans’ experiences with pretrial detention are reflective of those experienced elsewhere in the U.S. In terms of “how” these experiences played out, pretrial detention was incredibly harmful to our sample of Ohioans who at the time of detention, were still presumed innocent under the law.

In the area of employment, pretrial detention costs many individuals their jobs, while pretrial release allows others to stay employed. This loss of work exacerbates the economic instability that many in the criminal justice system face (Rabuy & Kopf, 2016). Various pains of imprisonment are also present in the detention experience. Ohioans detained pretrial experienced a stark lack of mental and physical health care services, as well as concerns about their safety inside jail. These concerns, combined with other stressors of jail, created motivation to accept less than optimal plea deals in order to escape confinement. Our participants also realized that pretrial detention was a significant barrier to mounting a good legal defense.

The only potential benefit of pretrial detention that participants discussed concerned the fact that being detained prevented them from using drugs. However, since drug use is a public health issue instead of a criminal justice issue, then the most effective way to tackle drug use is through treatment, and not detention (APHA, 2013). Therefore, preventing drug use should not be viewed as a sufficient justification for cash bail.

Limitations

This study is not without its limitations. First, due to IRB constraints, our sample did not include individuals who were under criminal justice supervision (including those on parole or probation, or those currently incarcerated). However, since our sample includes individuals who had experienced probation and parole, and who were incarcerated for long periods of time, we do not believe that this aspect of our sample threatens our findings.

Second, our sample has a limited number of individuals with children. Future studies should focus specifically on how pretrial detention affects Ohioans with children. However, based on our findings of how detention negatively impacted social bonds of Ohioans, it is unlikely that a more focused study would find that pretrial detention and bail improved relationships between parents and children.

Finally, like most qualitative research, our sampling methods do not allow us to generalize to the entire population of individuals arrested in Ohio. However, conducting a randomized survey of individuals arrested in Ohio to obtain generalizable results is impossible from a logistical standpoint. Furthermore, the goal of qualitative research like ours is to uncover and present rich and vivid narrative accounts from individuals who have experienced a phenomenon. Based on the strength of our theoretical saturation and rich detail provided by our participants, our findings provide strong empirical evidence of the detrimental effects that Ohioans experience due to pretrial detention and the use of cash bail.

Policy Recommendations

Considering our findings, we provide the following policy recommendations concerning the use of bail and pretrial detention:

1. The Ohio criminal justice system should attempt to reduce the number of arrests that can lead to pretrial detention, by instead utilizing treatment and diversion, especially for crimes of drug use. This can be done through changing laws surrounding crimes and instructing police to issue citations whenever possible.
2. As recommended by other scholars, recognizance release should be the norm and conditional release an exception (Hopkins et al., 2018). If a judge is going to deny bail, it should be based on a significant concern for public safety that outweighs the limitations placed on the accused.
3. If the concern is about an individual’s flight risk, the court should refrain from using bail and instead use alternatives for tracking, such as electronic monitoring. Jurisdictions should not charge fees for these services, because like bail, they often punish people based on their financial circumstances (Hopkins et al., 2018). Because electronic monitoring is much cheaper than incarceration (Hopkins et al., 2018), fees can be covered by the cost savings that jurisdictions experience from relying less on pretrial detention.
4. Individuals with no risk of failing to return to court (e.g., no criminal history, low level offense, strong ties to the community) should be released on recognizance without monitoring as soon as possible. These bail decisions should strongly consider the question of “what does this person stand to lose” if they are detained pretrial?
5. Once an individual is arrested, the bail decision should be made as soon as possible in order to provide minimal disruption to the accused. Even incarceration of one or two days as a result of being detained over a weekend could lead to termination of employment, assault in jail, and other negative experiences.
6. If a bail amount must be assigned, it should be asset-based, and calculated in accordance with the individual’s financial resources.
7. If an individual is assigned bail, the justice system should provide information and guidance for how bail should be paid, in order to minimize stress on support networks and decrease the amount of time an individual spends in detention.
8. If an individual is to be detained pretrial for any reasons, the conditions of confinement should not be punishing. Because individuals are detained under a presumption of innocence, detention should:
   • Provide sufficient health care, including immediate access to medications and health treatment.
   • Ensure the safety of individuals through regulation of overcrowding and when required, protective custody.
   • Provide access to employment opportunities during confinement, or unemployment assistance to compensate for lost wages during detention and/or the loss of jobs upon release. 
   • Facilitate visits and communication between detained individuals and support networks. 
   • Facilitate visits and communication between detained individuals and legal counsel.

Conclusion

To conclude, our findings show that the policy of cash bail and pretrial detention has stark detrimental effects on Ohioans who are involved in the criminal justice system. The intended goal of cash bail is to ensure that a defendant appears in court. For the Ohioans in this study, ensuring their appearance came at a high cost. While some were fortunate to be bailed out, raising money took financial and mental tolls on their families and support systems. In the cases of those who were detained, individuals suffered loss of employment, and mental and physical health ailments went untreated or were even exacerbated. Part of this mental health struggle was a result of concerns about safety while in jail. Finally, individuals who were detained found it very difficult to fight their case and the conditions of jail forced several to consider taking pleas in order to escape the stressors of confinement.

Ohio policymakers should consider that the use of cash bail in Ohio not only perpetuates inequality, but also compromises the fairness and integrity of our justice system. Although the criminal justice system operates under a presumption of innocence, the use of cash bail forces individuals who have not been found guilty to experience the pains of imprisonment. Our findings show that these collateral consequences of cash bail that Ohioans experience pose a threat to equal protection under the law because they are tied directly to an individual’s financial resources.

While we understand that policymakers in Ohio have amended the constitution to take public safety into account when using cash bail, our findings illuminate the stark human toll that cash bail takes on Ohio residents. We urge policymakers in Ohio to follow our policy recommendations in order to create a justice system that ensures individuals accused of crimes do not experience the harsh consequences of punishment before they are found guilty of a crime, regardless of the justification for their detention.