Does Cash Bail Deter Misconduct?
利用检察官主导的改革导致低额现金保释和审前监管大幅减少、但审前拘留不变的情况，检验财务激励是否有效，发现没有证据表明财务抵押对不出庭或审前犯罪有威慑作用。
Courts routinely use low cash bail as a financial incentive to ensure released defendants appear in court and abstain from crime. This can create burdens for defendants with little empirical evidence on its efficacy. We exploit a prosecutor-driven reform that led to a sharp reduction in low cash bail and pretrial supervision, with no effect on pretrial detention, to test whether such incentive mechanisms succeed at their intended purpose. We find no evidence that financial collateral has a deterrent effect on failure to appear or pretrial crime. This paper also contributes to the literature on legal actor discretion, showing that nonbinding reforms may have limited impact on jail populations.