Discipling risk: Governing through conditions on bail in the community pre-trial

Nicole M. Myers and Alyssa Leblond

Journal of Criminal Justice, 2024, vol. 92, issue C

Abstract: Most people accused of a crime are released into the community pending the resolution of their charges. To manage perceived risk, conditions of release on bail modify and control behaviour while providing a mechanism and justification for state monitoring. Drawing on 120 interviews with accused people in Canada this paper develops a typology to theorize how bail is experienced by accused, providing a framework for understanding what motivates accused to comply or violate their bail conditions and what impact conditioning has on their lives. Our analysis reveals insights into how accused present themselves to the court, navigate conditions of release and evaluate being conditioned in the community under the threat of further criminalization. Consistent with Yule et al. (2023), accused report a complex, variegated experience of social control in the community prior to conviction. Insights from participants suggest that bail is part of a broader criminal court process, that differentiates and marks accused (Kohler-Hausmann, 2018) who lack the requisite docility and discipline as risky and requiring more intensive conditioning and monitoring.

Keywords: Bail; Pre-trial release; Failure to comply; Social control; Discipline (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047235224000473
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcjust:v:92:y:2024:i:c:s0047235224000473

DOI: 10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2024.102198

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Criminal Justice is currently edited by Matthew DeLisi

More articles in Journal of Criminal Justice from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().