Assessing the Potential Impact of 2020 Bail Reforms on 2019 New York City Criminal Court Cases

By Olive Lu, Erica Bond, and Preeti Chauhan,

In April 2019, New York State passed significant reforms to the laws governing bail, which the state legislature then amended in April 2020 (collectively referred to as the "2020 Bail Reforms"). The first set of reforms (“Original Reforms”),1 which went into effect on January 1, 2020, included restrictions on which charges were eligible for money bail, mandated that people be released on recognizance (ROR)2 unless more restrictive conditions are needed to assure court appearance, required that judges set at least three forms of bail, and take into account an individual's ability to pay when setting money bail. The amendments to the bail reforms (“Amended Reforms”)3 went into effect in July 2020 and moved some charges that had been made ineligible for bail under the Original Reforms into the category of charges where judges have discretion to set bail.4 In September 2019, DCJ released a research brief that examined how the Original Reforms would have impacted the number and proportion of cases resulting in pretrial release without bail had they been in effect in 2018. This report updates DCJ’s prior research brief by using 2019 case data, applying the Original and Amended Reforms, and includes additional analyses on how the reforms would have impacted different types of charges and demographic groups in 2019.

New York: The Data Collaborative for Justice (DCJ) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, ,2021. 34p.