NY Governor Kathy Hochul penned an editorial in the Daily News on March 24 in support of her proposed changes to Bail and Criminal Justice reforms passed in 2019.
Titled “Don’t blame bail reform; Do improve it,” Hochul and Lt. Governor Brian Bejamin write, ”
In 2019, the state Legislature enacted landmark reforms to our bail laws. The goal of these changes was to overhaul a system where race and access to money all too often determined whether defendants would be locked up before facing trial. These disparate outcomes, which disproportionately impacted Black and Brown communities, were not only fundamentally unjust, but undermined trust in our criminal justice system.
The reforms were successful: Fewer New Yorkers are kept behind bars just because they can’t pay, and we’ve saved taxpayer dollars in the process.
Still, since the law was passed, we have seen a distressing increase in shootings and homicides. The data does not, however, suggest that bail reform is the main cause: In New York City, the percentage of people who are arraigned and released for gun crimes who go on to be rearrested has barely changed since bail reform took effect, from 25% before bail reform to 27%, according to an analysis from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. Outside of New York City, that percentage went from 20% to 22%.
Similarly, the percentage of shooting arrests in New York City where the defendant had an open felony charge has hovered around 25% for years, though it crept up from 24% in 2019 to 28% in 2021, according to NYPD data.
Blaming bail reform for the increase in violence that cities across America are facing isn’t fair and isn’t supported by the data. Doing so risks distracting us from what are likely far more significant factors: upheaval from the pandemic, the availability of illegal guns, increased gang activity, lower arrest rates and a backed-up court system, to name a few.
But that doesn’t mean the bail law as it currently stands is perfect, either. When one out of four people arrested for gun crimes goes on to be re-arrested, we haven’t done enough. These repeat offender rates were a failure before bail reform, and they remain a failure today.
First, we need to address the problem of repeat offenders. If someone is committing a second or third offense while out on pretrial release, officers should be able to make an arrest and not be limited, as they are in many cases, to issuing a “desk appearance ticket.” Similarly, hate crimes should be subject to arrest, not desk appearance tickets. And for repeat offenders, judges should be allowed to set bail — even if the crime would not currently be bail-eligible.
Second, we should make it possible for judges to set bail in all felony cases involving illegal guns, including when illegal guns are sold or given to minors — a crime that is, astonishingly, not currently bail-eligible.
Finally, for violent crimes and crimes involving guns, we should make it possible for judges to set more restrictive pretrial conditions, based on concrete criteria. Right now, all decisions about bail and pretrial detention must be based solely on the “least restrictive” conditions necessary to ensure the defendant returns to court,” writes Hochul and Benjamin.
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins spoke to reporters at the State Capital in Albany on March 23. “I think the general sense is that nobody in our conference is wanting to go backwards. Absolutely not.”
“There were a lot of discussions before we did the original reforms. And again, we’re always happy to look again, but we’re not going back to a place that we weren’t at before we even began the discussion on bail,” adding “I think all 10 points would be hard,” referring to Hochul’s 10-point plan.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said, “Members just want to do their jobs and think about this and understand why there are differing opinions, different interpretations of law, and I just don’t know if that can be figured out in two days.”
Both Speaker Heastie and Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins said that there focus is to pass a budget by the March 31 deadline. Gov. Hochul has proposed including the bail reform changes into the state budget, making it more difficult for legislators to vote against the entire state spending plan.
