Do Detainees Plead Guilty Faster? A Survival Analysis of Pretrial Detention and the Timing of Guilty Pleas.

Research suggests that pre-trial detention leads defendants to plead guilty more quickly than other defendants for a myriad of material, psychological, and temporal reasons. Defendants in pretrial remand are at a higher risk of being prosecuted, convicted, and incarcerated; receiving longer sentences; and experiencing higher rates of recidivism. This pattern of behavior has led legal scholars to view pre-trial detention as a form of “structural coercion” to get a defendant to plead guilty instead of going to trial. This study examined data on felony defendants that pled guilty between 1990 and 2004. The results indicated that defendants kept in pre-trial detention pleaded guilty 2.86 times faster than defendants who were released prior to trial. The fast-paced nature of these pleas also raises concerns about elevated levels of false guilty pleas to avoid the hardships associated with pretrial detention.

“[T]he material, psychological, and temporal pains of pretrial detention lead many detainees to plead guilty to escape jail. . . . [S]tudies suggest that pretrial detention serves as a powerful prosecutorial tool for swiftly securing guilty pleas.” p. 1017