Broken Rules: How Pennsylvania Courts Use Cash Bail to Incarcerate People Before Trial

Every day, Pennsylvania incarcerates tens of thousands of people in county jails, more than half of whom have not been convicted of a crime. People sit in small cells for weeks or months and even years on end, simply because they cannot afford to pay cash bail.

When a person is incarcerated before their trial, they lose more than just their liberty — even after just a few days in jail, a person can lose their job, access to medical care, custody of their children, and even their homes. Cash bail is a primary driver of pretrial incarceration. When assigned cash bail, an accused person must pay a sum of money as collateral against a future court appearance in order to obtain their release.

This website is a companion to the ACLU of Pennsylvania’s report, Broken Rules: How Pennsylvania Courts Use Cash Bail to Incarcerate People Before Trial, which is based on a two-year bail dataset from 2016 to 2017. Read the report to learn more and explore this website to dive into the data.

About the project