Handbook on Pretrial Justice

"The lessons from decades of over punishment and mass imprisonment at the end of the criminal process today point toward an urgent and necessary reckoning with the pretrial phase of the process, where a vastly less visible set of criminal justice actors deal out punishments on a mass scale. This handbook combines comprehensive coverage in five parts with individual chapters that provide deep dives into the critical issues across this extended and until recently little attended but high stakes field."

Jonathan Simon, Lance Robbins Professor of Criminal Justice Law, UC Berkeley, School of Law

"For too long, the epidemic of pretrial human caging in the United States has not been treated with the urgency it requires. Those of us who work in the punishment bureaucracy have allowed massive suffering: millions of separated families; rampant disease, assault, and death; lost jobs, homes, education; and enormous spiritual and financial costs. By any reasonable metric of public safety, our pretrial system has been a disaster. We are in desperate need of academic and practical work that brings together scholars, activists, practitioners, and policymakers to dismantle these harmful systems of pain and that help us look forward to creating systems that help people flourish."

Alec Karakatsanis, Founder and Executive Director, Civil Rights Corps

"With accessible and incisive contributions on bail, pretrial detention, jails, and a host of related issues, this comprehensive handbook is an invaluable resource for scholars, legal professionals, and advocates who want to better understand the contours and consequences of pretrial justice within and beyond the United States."

Joshua Page, Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota