Despite the idea that all are equal under the law, women are often treated more leniently in pretrial decisions.

The 14th Amendment guarantees that Americans are all equal under the law, but in reality this is often not the case. In new research which covers nearly 78,000 felony defendants, Gillian M. Pinchevsky and Benjamin Steiner examined the whether or not criminal defendants received different treatment based on their sex or other characteristics during their pretrial period. They find that compared to men, female defendants were treated more leniently during the pretrial process. In addition, women arrested for more serious offenses were treated more harshly than other women.