Jennifer Doleac

Texas A&M University Website

Jennifer Doleac is Associate Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University, Director of the Justice Tech Lab, and host of the Probable Causation podcast. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University. Professor Doleac is the Co-Director of the Criminal Justice Expert Panel.

Voting History

Pretrial detention

Reducing the number of people detained pretrial will lead to a net increase in crime in the medium- to long-term.

Vote Confidence
Disagree 7
Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Disagree 7
Comments

There's solid evidence that scaling back pretrial detention would reduce future offending by those who are released, over the medium-term.

Ending the use of cash bail will meaningfully reduce the number of people detained pretrial.

Vote Confidence
Neutral/No Opinion 7
Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Agree 7
Comments

If judges are setting bail in order to detain people, they might simply detain the same people when cash bail is not an intermediate step. There is some recent evidence from Philadelphia that reducing the use of cash bail had on effect on detention rates (Ouss & Stevenson, 2021).

Using risk assessment to inform detention decisions will meaningfully reduce the number of people detained pretrial.

Vote Confidence
Neutral/No Opinion 7
Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Neutral/No Opinion 5
Comments

While risk assessments could push judges in this direction, there is little evidence that it's having this effect in practice. This is likely because risk assessments simply provide information and a recommended action; judges are not required to follow the recommendation (and often don't).