Incarceration Without Conviction addresses an understudied fairness flaw in the criminal justice system. On any given day, approximately 500,000 Americans are in pretrial detention in the US, held in local jails not because they are considered a flight or public safety risk, but because they are poor and cannot afford bail or a bail bond. Over the course of a year, millions of Americans cycle through local jails, most there for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. These individuals are disproportionately Black and poor. This book draws on extensive legal data to highlight the ways in which pretrial detention drives guilty pleas and thus fuels mass incarceration--and the disproportionate impact on Black Americans. It shows the myriad harms that being detained wreaks on people’s lives and well-being, regardless of whether or not those who are detained are ever convicted. Rabinowitz argues that pretrial detention undermines the presumption of innocence in the American criminal justice system and, in so doing, erodes the very meaning of innocence.

Examines the causes for mass incarceration of Americans and calls for the reform of the bail system. Traces the history of bail, how it has come to be an oppressive tool of the courts, and makes recommendations for reforming the bail system and alleviating the mass incarceration problem.

Pre-trial detention refers to the period when a person, after being arrested, is detained so as to determine the nature of the offences and the characterization of the charges. This notion is part and parcel of the legal proceedings of a criminal investigation and aims at striking a fragile balance between protecting the State and respecting individual freedoms. Lots of examples can be quoted to illustrate the various pre-trial detention modalities in common law and civil law traditions, including the duration of custody; custody rights; right to silence; right to the presence of a lawyer; modalities and control of pre-trial detention; and procedures in case of wrongful detention. This book makes an important contribution to the newly-researched topic of pre-trial detention from a theoretical and empirical point of view. Papers alternatively consider various issues: they analyse the philosophical principles and policies underlying pre-trial detention and look at the different forms it takes according to several countries; on a more technical and pragmatic level, they raise the question of the use of an appropriate terminology and the problem of translation that may arise from the differences between the studied legal systems. Finally, they consider the checks and balances mechanisms put in place to limit the negative effects of the measures restricting liberty. This volume contains a selection of contributions by academics specialized in law and comparative criminal procedure, political science, history, sociology, linguistics, and legal translation, and offers a comparative analysis of countries with differing legal traditions.

"Project of the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Standards Committee, Criminal Justice Section"--Title page verso.