Bail Reform Revisited: The Impact of New York’s Amended Bail Law on Pretrial Detention

By Michael Rempel and Krystal Rodriguez

On April 1, 2019, New York State passed sweeping restrictions to the use of money bail and pretrial detention, ruling out their use for nearly all misdemeanor and nonviolent felony charges. The reforms also established a new presumption of release for all cases—with conditions when deemed necessary. Even when bail and pretrial detention remain legally permissible, the reforms limited their use to cases when a judge finds them to be the least restrictive condition necessary to assure court attendance. Bail reform went into effect January 1, 2020, and, with close to nine out of 10 cases made ineligible for bail,1 contributed to a 40 percent decline in New York City’s pretrial jail population. Elsewhere in the state, the impacts were even slightly larger. The reforms were then amended April 3, 2020, with an effective date at the outset of July for the modified statute. The 2020 amendments include: (1) an expanded list of charges and situations, especially involving nonviolent felonies, in which judges may again set money bail or remand people to pretrial detention; (2) more options for ordering non-monetary release conditions (including mandated treatment, maintaining employment or educational involvement, and conditions related to the protection of domestic violence victims); and (3) new public reporting requirements to document pretrial decision-making and outcomes on an ongoing basis across the state. Our analysis suggests that, when compared to the original reforms passed in 2019, the amendments will produce a 16 percent relative increase in the use of money bail and pretrial detention among New York City criminal cases and a 16 percent increase in the pretrial jail population. Similar effects are likely across the rest of the state.

New York: Center for Court Innovation, 2020. 224p.