• Bail:
  • To protect the VICTIM and Society (Not considered in New York yet)
  • To make sure the offender appears in court
  • To make sure the offender does NOT re-offend

Recent Bail changes have hand cuffed police and judges from setting appropriate bail. Before the new bail changes Police were able to hold offenders (really for 1 or 2 days) until arraignment or post bail based upon the types of crimes the offender was arrested for. This was helpful especially when dealing with volatile situations (like neighbor disputes and domestic violence) where police could hold an offender overnight until arraignment by a judge. There are other situations when police arrest persons on warrant and that person used to be turned over to the municipality to answer the warrant and held to see a judge. This made the offender accountable to the criminal justice system. Now many more offenders are ignoring the fact that they have to attend court.

At arraignment “prior to the recent bail changes” a judge had the freedom to release the offender, hold the offender, or put bail on the offender. Now current legislation has curtailed the judges freedom to hold an offender or to set bail and it has become almost automatic for most crimes to release the offender. What has resulted is an augment that recidivism has increased as a result of the bail changes which has led to a decrease in public safety.

John Jay College has just released a report “Does New York’s Bail Reform Law Impact Recidivism?” that tends to disprove the premise that the NY bail reform changes have increased offender recidivism. However, if you’re on the ground in the criminal justice system there is an overwhelming sense that recidivism is one of a few significant outcomes that has resulted since the changes in bail reform. Another is increased disrespect by offenders to officers and probation.

The article “Straight Talk About Bail Reform” argues that bail reform has led to an increase in recidivism by offenders. The article has several links with data supporting it’s argument. One prominent link is to a New York Post article “Bail ‘Reform’ Increased Crime – and Misleading Studies Don’t Prove Otherwise” that makes an extensive analysis how New York’s bail reform increased recidivism and how the John Jay Report (listed above) erred with it’s analysis. The professors should look at the New York Post article and recalculate their finding and submit a correction

If you believe that the recent changes in bail reform are good please challenge these ideas to the “Straight Talk About Bail Reform” article and the New York Post article “Bail ‘Reform’ article. Another helpful article is “More Criminals, More Crime Measuring the Public Safety Impact of New York’s 2019 Bail Law”.

Also when considering Bail reform changes keep the following points in mind:

• Resent changes were solely Offender based – None of the changes considered Victims
• Offenders can miss court dates and warrants will NOT be issued for them, at least not until the court tries to call, text, and email the offender for several days
• If a Victim or Witness misses a court date the case can be dismissed. REMEMBER who violated the law.
• Under the old law when and offender was held by police the most the could be held would be 72 hrs (ex Friday to Monday) if there was no available judge on the weekend. The offender was usually arraigned the next morning.
• Most station house bail was in the hundreds of dollars.
• Holding an offender was a good decision for safety or they refuse to cooperate with their identity
• Under the old law it was probably 30% Held/Bail and now less than 5% Held/Bail so it was always a small number of arrests held/bail