By Jaeok Kim, Quinn Hood, and Elliot Connors

Over the last decade, thousands of New Yorkers have been held in jail pretrial, largely because they could not afford to pay bail. In April 2019, New York legislators passed bail reform bills updating a set of laws that had remained largely untouched since 1971. The laws, which went into effect on January 1, 2020, made release before trial automatic for most people accused of misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. In cases that remained eligible for bail—including violent felonies and some domestic violence- or sex-related charges—the law mandated that the judge consider a person’s ability to pay bail. However, an organized, immediate backlash by the opponents of bail reform led the New York legislature to amend the law in April 2020, only three months after the original reform went into effect. Meanwhile, in March 2020, New York became an epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic changed the way the criminal legal system operated. Court hearings, including arraignments, became virtual. Jury trials were cancelled. And, understanding that jails could become COVID-19 hotspots and drive outbreaks outside of the jails, some court actors across the state began working to reduce jail populations. This report by the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) is the first to examine the impact of April 2019’s bail reform in New York State by exploring trends in jail populations and admissions in New York City and a sample of counties

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2021. 44p.

By Brad Lander

The purpose of bail is to ensure that a person who is arrested returns to court for trial. However, in practice, the impact of bail has been to detain tens of thousands of New Yorkers, presumed innocent, before trial and cost low-income families tens of millions of dollars every year. To address these concerns, in April 2019 the New York State Legislature passed sweeping reforms to state bail laws. The guiding principle was that no one should be jailed because they are too poor to pay bail. The law prohibited bail-setting for most misdemeanor and non-violent felony charges, required judges to consider a person’s ability to pay before setting bail, and required that defendants have at least three options for making bail, including less onerous options. In the ramp-up to implementation of bail reform on January 1, 2020, the jail population dropped quickly, falling from about 7,100 on November 1, 2019 to 5,800 on January 1, 2020 and to 5,500 on February 1, 2020. When COVID-19 hit the city in March 2020, the jail population fell further, temporarily falling below 4,000 as arrests dropped and efforts were made to reduce the incarcerated population, including those at greater risk of severe illness, during the pandemic

New York: Office of the City Comptroller, Bureau of Budget and Bureau of Policy and Research 2022. 17p.

By Alex Albrigh

Are the effects of money bail on misconduct large enough to justify its costs? Money bail advocates argue that its usage is critical for averting misconduct, while skeptics counter that its effects are small and not worth the consequent human costs of pretrial detention. I address this debate directly by using administrative data and a policy reform in Kentucky. An automatic release program removed financial bail conditions for a subset of low-level cases, creating an opportunity to estimate the program’s effects on detention and misconduct using a differences-in-differences approach. The program cut the usage of financial bail by 50.5 p.p., while it increased the rate of failure to appear by 3.3 p.p. The program’s effect on pretrial rearrest is indistinguishable from zero, and the data rules out even modest sized increases. Effects on misconduct are primarily driven by substitution away from money bail, rather than from unsecured bail (which only requires payment in the event of misconduct). …

Unpublished paper, 2021. 61p.

By Allie Preston and Rachael Eisenberg

On any given day in 2022, 658,000 people are incarcerated in jails across the country, more than 80 percent of whom are awaiting trial to determine if they will be convicted of a crime. Although courts have determined that most people can safely await their trial while remaining in their communities, the inability to afford the cost of cash bail prevents thousands of people from accessing pretrial release. The pretrial process that is supposed to protect community safety and ensure access to justice has been corrupted by the corporate influence of the commercial bail industry. A small group of large insurance corporations oversees a web of private companies that make an estimated profit of $2.4 billion each year.2 Forprofit bail companies get rich by foisting nonrefundable costs onto the very people who can least afford the cost of bail, most often people experiencing poverty and people of color. These costs are owed even if the charges are dropped or the person is found not guilty at trial. The commercial bail industry actively defends cash bail systems that produce racially3 and economically unjust outcomes,4 high rates of pretrial incarceration,5 significant costs to taxpayers,6 and negative public safety consequences.7 The commercial bail industry traps people who cannot afford cash bail premiums in a predatory cycle of debt and incarceration, in the same way that payday loan companies and other predatory lenders make a profit by taking advantage of people who need help affording the necessities of daily life.8 Moreover, commercial bail companies operate with little oversight or accountability, frequently engaging in abusive and unethical practices that jeopardize public trust and undermine the legal system’s ability to administer justice.

Washington, DC: American Progress, 2022. 36p.

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.