Bail Reform in New York: Legislative Provisions and Implications for New York City

By Michael Rempel and Krystal Rodriguez

On April 1, 2019, New York State passed sweeping criminal justice reform legislation that eliminates money bail and pretrial detention for nearly all misdemeanor and nonviolent felony defendants; requires prosecutors to disclose their evidence to the defense earlier in case proceedings; promotes speedy trial rights; and reduces the maximum length of a jail sentence for people convicted of a misdemeanor from one year to 364 days (avoiding deportation exposure for many immigrants convicted of minor crimes). This document reviews the major components of the first of these changes, bail reform, and includes data indicating the scope of its potential impact in New York City. On any given day in early 2019, more than 22,000 New Yorkers were incarcerated in a local jail—about 8,000 in New York City and 14,000 in the rest of the state. As is the case in local jails across the country, more than six in ten of these individuals were held pretrial, prior to a conviction, usually stemming from an inability to afford money bail. The stakes for how bail reform impacts this pretrial population are especially high in New York City, given the city’s efforts to close the jail complex on Rikers Island. Bail reform, along with the other reform measures, is scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2020.

New York: Center for Court Innovation, 2020. 13p.