John Donohue

Stanford University Website

John Donohue is the C. Wendell and Edith M. Carlsmith Professor of Law at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University and J.D. from Harvard Law School.

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

Pretrial detention incapacitates in the short run and ensures defendants show up for trial but I suspect it is not pursued in an effective way in that lots of low-risk individuals are locked up needlessly and the resources thereby wasted could be diverted to effective crime reduction strategies. I would need to know more about the costs and benefits of pretrial detention and the manner of inducing less detention to opine on whether a reduction will be benign or harmful.

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

Vote Confidence
Agree 8
Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Agree 7
Comments

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

Vote Confidence
Agree 8
Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Neutral/No Opinion 5
Comments