Bail Reform Isn’t Linked To Crime In NYC, Study Says

NEW YORK CITY – Earlier in August, the Brennan Center for Justice released a massive report covering 33 cities – including New York City – which found “no statistically significant relationship between bail reform and crime rates,” meaning that “there is no reason to believe that bail reform has led to increased crime.”

The study, which is available here, was authored by Brennan’s Terry-Ann Craigie and Ames Grawert, and covers major offenses between 2015 and 2021, comparing data from cities that had some type of bail reform to data from cities that did not.

What Is Bail Reform, And How Does It Work?

Bail reform refers to changes to the rules and practices around setting bail, which is the money someone must pay to be released from jail while awaiting trial. Fairness is typically the aim of reform, advocates say, so people aren't kept in jail just because they can't afford to make bail, especially for minor crimes.

Instead of money, decisions about pretrial release are based on whether the person is likely to show up for court or if they pose a risk to public safety.

Opponents, on the other hand, say bail reform poses a serious risk to public safety, increases recidivism, leads to the failure of defendants to appear in court, undermines public confidence in the criminal justice system, and more.

“I think people sort of assume that bail reform means that people accused of violent crimes go free, and that’s actually not how bail reform works,” Ames Grawert, senior counsel at the Brennan Center, told Patch.

“This is true in New York, which largely abolished bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, but for somebody arrested on suspicion of murder, for example, judges retain discretion,” he said.

What about prior offenses or a criminal history? Are judges able to weigh these factors when making decisions on bail or pretrial release?

“The bail statute was amended to allow judges to consider priors in a lot of cases,” Grawert said.

“The statute has some flexibility and it's designed that way. Whether that flexibility is used is a good question. What’s written on the page is one thing, and how it’s actually carried out in court is another thing.”

Notably, in New York State judges can consider a person's risk to public safety when making decisions about bail or pretrial release, but the law does emphasize the least restrictive conditions necessary to ensure the defendant's return to court.

What Did The Study Find?

“If you’re looking for evidence of a connection between bail reform and crime, it’s not clear that there is a connection, despite cutting the data in many different ways. We’re part of a growing universe of papers that find little to no relationship between bail reform and changes in crime rate,” Grawert said.

Correlation is not causation, Grawert emphasized, which in this case means that although two things happened at the same time, it doesn’t mean that one caused the other.

That’s particularly relevant here in New York.

“We saw crime rise dramatically in 2020, in New York and across the country. We also saw bail reform go into effect in 2020 [in New York]. It’s understandable that people would draw a link between the two,” Grawert said.

Questions Remain

A glance at an NYPD index of seven major felony offenses since 2000 reveals that in 2023, the total number of these offenses reached levels not seen since the mid-2000s.

“Focusing on the total number of felonies can be obfuscating,” Grawert said. “It’s really important to look under the hood and see what the changes are,” he explained.

“You see it [in this data]: robbery, way down. Murder, way down. But, you do see that a couple offenses have gone way up: grand larceny, for example, which appears to be driven by an increase in the number of shoplifting complaints. There’s also a long-term increase in felony assaults – you sort of see it in this data – where it picks up in 2010 and ramps up between now and 2023,” he continued.

For Grawert, the specifics are important.

“I think the real question is, what’s happening there? And unfortunately, I don’t really have good answers,” he said.

“I think there might be multiple reasons why felony assaults are increasing over time. That’s a really important trend and one of the key drivers of this change in overall number of offenses,” he said. “The overall trend may be declining homicide, but no less important is the change in felony assault.”

And that’s not all.

“Grand theft auto has gone up sharply from 2017 low points. Security vulnerabilities were exposed in a couple of car brands” – namely, Kia and Hyundai – “those vulnerabilities went viral, and people began exploiting them,” he said.

“That’s not the only reason [the numbers have risen], but if you look at motor vehicle theft and the kinds of cars being stolen, it’s really troubling. We’ve also seen a link between people stealing cars to commit more serious offenses,” he added.

Additionally, most data doesn’t capture misdemeanors, which make them harder to study.

“A lot of cities post crime data and the FBI equivalent of 7 major felonies. There aren’t misdemeanors on that list. So you have to find a set of cities that are comparable, with robust data, and you have to pick misdemeanor offenses that are tracked by that set of cities. It’s really hard to do,” Grawert explained.

‘One Of The Safest Cities In The Country’

“I’m never going to be somebody to minimize people's fears,” Grawert said. “People deserve not just to be safe, but to feel safe.”

“When people who are not New Yorkers talk about crime, they often omit that New York is one of the safest cities in the country. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of work to be done, and even if New York were to return to some of the pre-pandemic lows, there would still be work to be done, because crime is distributed very unequally across the city.”

Statistically speaking, how safe New York City is may partly explain why any failure that can be traced to bail reform is so alarming, in Grawert’s view.

“When a mistake is made on bail and someone is released who shouldn't have been and they go on to do something awful or disturbing, that's a highly visible failure,” Grawert said.

“The success stories you don’t really see, because you don’t really see them again,” he continued.

“If somebody is put on supervised release, they make their appointments, get a job, and beat their charges, then that person is never seen in the data again, and those stories are both harder to tell qualitatively and quantitatively.”

Fixes

Whether or not the reforms are working is a matter of opinion, but in Grawert’s view, there is ample room for improvement – inside and outside of what we may commonly think of as the criminal justice system.

“When we talk about making bail reform work and making it as effective as possible, the thing that people jump to often is change the language, change the statute, repeal X, and repeal Y,” Grawert said.

“Where bail reform isn’t working perfectly, what might need to happen are reforms focused on how it is implemented. In New York City, supervised release is a big part of how bail reform is meant to work, and that’s a really important program, but they will tell you, they’re really overloaded. They need more people, more resources, to make sure the infrastructure of pretrial release works,” he continued. “Governor Hochul has been responsive to that, but there’s always more to be done.”

Other actions are outside the immediate purview of the criminal justice system.

“There's really good research that summer youth employment programs help reduce crime. We’ve noted this, the Manhattan Institute has noted this – there’s a lot of evidence on this. Those programs really work because they give kids meaning, purpose, and a place to be when they’re not in school,” he explained.

“Similarly, there’s really good evidence for something simple: streetlights.”

Another option?

“Creating safe spaces for communities to congregate. Things like this, they’re easy. You’d rather have done them a decade ago, but the right time to do them is now.”

Do you have thoughts about bail reform? Email michael.mcdowell@patch.com.