Stacie St. Louis, a doctoral student in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, was selected as a co-winner of the 2021 Ben Steiner Excellence in Corrections Student Paper Award, which recognizes the most outstanding student research paper.
Stacie’s winning paper was titled, “Bail Denied or Bail Too High? Disentangling Cumulative Effects by Pretrial Detention Type and Release.” She shared the following overview:
“While it is well established that defendants held in pretrial detention experience more severe case outcomes than released defendants, it is unclear how this effect may vary between defendants held on bail and denied bail. To better understand the cumulative disadvantages of pretrial detention, this paper examines over 100,000 defendants across 65 counties and 19 years. I use a series of regression analyses and path models to estimate the effect of pretrial detention type (denied bail, held on bail, released) on a series of case outcomes: conviction, guilty plea, charge reduction, incarceration, and sentence length. Findings indicate that released defendants experience less severe outcomes at every stage of case processing. While defendants held on bail generally face less severe outcomes than those denied bail, both groups are convicted and incarcerated at similar rates. In addition to direct effects, I also find that pretrial detention type indirectly influences sentencing outcomes via pleas and charge reductions.”
This award is given by the Division on Corrections and Sentencing within the American Society of Criminology and judged on five evaluative criteria, including:
- The overall significance of the work
- Its research contribution to the field
- Integration of prior literature in the area
- Appropriateness and sophistication of the research methodology
- Overall quality of writing and organization of the paper
Congratulations, Stacie!
