In 2017, Connecticut’s General Assembly passed HB 7044, a bill intended to reduce the number of people detained pretrial while awaiting bail. Despite the bill’s passage, nearly ten years later, researchers at the Vera Institute of Justice found that the number of people held pretrial in Connecticut has remained largely unchanged.
“Despite recent pretrial reforms, the Connecticut pretrial population hasn’t really vanished,” said Caitlin Yee, a Vera Research Associate. “The population hasn’t really budged.”
Yee said that in 2019, an average of 3,600 people were held in pre-trial detention each month, and in June 2026, that number remained at 3,500 people. In 2016, the year before HB 7044’s passage, Vera found the monthly average of pre-trial detainees was just under 4,000. Vera’s researchers analyzed DOC statistics on pretrial detention, as well as reports and statistics released by the Connecticut Sentencing Commission and the Office of Policy and Management (OPM). Yee and other Vera researchers presented their findings at Yale’s Pretrial Justice Symposium, held last Thursday.
While Connecticut experienced a decline in monthly average pretrial detention numbers in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID, the number has since rebounded, making Connecticut an outlier compared to other states, said Yee. Vera found that Massachusetts’ pretrial detention population reduced 16% from 2019 to 2025, and Pennsylvania’s reduced by 25% over the same period. Yee said the reason for this discrepancy is that Connecticut has people “stuck in pretrial detention too long, on bail that is far too high.”
“The median bail amount in Connecticut is $50,000, which is 10 to 100 times greater than what we see in other places where we have the data,” said Yee.
In the other states studied, Vera found that the median bail amount was $5,000. Yee shared that in Massachusetts, 86% of cases with bail had bail set at $5,000; in Texas, the median bail was set at $5,000; and in Kentucky, the median bail for misdemeanors was $500, while bail for felonies was $5,000. Beatrice Halbach-Singh, a Senior Research Associate at Vera, explained that Vera found median numbers to be a more reliable metric than averages, as “there may be a small number of people with very, very high, million-dollar bail amounts, and so the average would be much higher.”
“So, it’s exceptional that even with medium bail amounts, we expected it to be lower than $50,000,” said Halbach-Singh.
Vera found that 62% of Connecticut’s pretrial detainees are held for longer than a month, with the median length of stay being 42 days. Yee said this median is “much lower in other places,” offering Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where the median stay from 2023-2025 was 16 days, as an example. Yee said the median was longer in Connecticut not only due to high bail amounts, but also because “there are a lot of people detained who might be considered for release.”
“While Connecticut has really targeted misdemeanors in their reforms, the data show that there could be an opportunity to look towards a lower-level felony population for release,” said Yee.
When HB 7044 was passed in 2017, it eliminated cash bail for misdemeanors unless they were related to domestic violence incidents or if a judge found the defendant posed a significant flight risk, threat to public safety, or risk of witness intimidation or obstruction of justice. Vera found that Class D felonies made up 21% of the average pretrial detainee population from 2024 to 2025.
While Class D felonies contain charges as serious as second-degree assault, assault with motor vehicles, or weapons charges, Yee highlighted that people with failure-to-appear (FTAs) charges, which can be considered anywhere from a Class A misdemeanor to a Class D felony, depending on the charges in the defendant’s underlying court case, are a population that state legislators could re-examine. Vera found that the number of people booked in Connecticut on FTAs has doubled since 2019, from an average of 180 per day to an average of 311 per day in 2026. Vera found that 86% of such cases have bail set at more than $5,000, and that of the 2,000 people booked on FTAs in 2024-2025, 57% of those FTAs were considered misdemeanors and 43% were considered felonies.
“Pretrial detention for FTAs is a really widespread issue in the US — it’s worse in some communities than others — but the good news is that there are a lot of reforms that have been targeted towards FTAs because they’re often not really seen as a huge public safety risk,” said Yee.
She noted that women are two times more likely to be held on FTAs than men, explaining that these charges are often associated with an inability for defendants to secure the transportation, time off work, or childcare necessary to make their court dates. Some of the ways other states have reduced the number of FTAs have been by sending text reminders to defendants or reserving the charge for those deemed to be “really serious cases of willful flight,” said Yee.
Mike Lawlor, a former New Haven prosecutor, state representative, and Undersecretary of Criminal Justice Policy and Planning under Gov. Malloy, noted that judges have the sole discretion to set bonds.
“The criteria that judges apply in deciding how much of a bond to put on a warrant is non-existent; it’s just whatever they feel like, whatever they think is fair,” said Lawlor. “So if they’re really angry at a guy for not showing up, maybe it’s the second or third time, they’re high-paying them. These are things to be aware of.”
In Lawlor’s opinion, bail reform advocates face two barriers: that courts lean on cash bail to get defendants to plead guilty, allowing courts to avoid trial and expedite the judicial process, and that if cash bail is revoked and pre-sentencing determinations are based solely on how likely the defendant is to reoffend or flee, Connecticut’s courts will have to spend more time and money on creating a more robust pre-sentencing process.
“I think, equally, prosecutors, public defenders, and judges have gotten so comfortable with the way the system works, and to make any big changes would change the way they have to do their job,” said Lawlor. “And that’s always intimidating to people.”
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
