Yes, New York’s Bail Reform Has Increased Crime – By Charles Fain Lehman (City-Journal) / Sept 22, 2022
New data prove it.
On Wednesday, the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) quietly dropped a bombshell. For months, the state has avoided releasing much-needed data on individuals who were arraigned in New York before lawmakers passed bail reform. But newly available data confirm what critics have long argued: bail reform was followed by a significant increase in criminal reoffending.
It’s worth explaining the new data in detail. Until now, analysts not privy to government databases had to use data on arraignments in New York State published by the Office of Courts Administration. Those data currently cover most arraignments between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2021. New York’s bail reform went into effect on the earlier date. This means that no detailed data were publicly available on arraignments and their outcomes before bail reform—something we need to understand how things changed after bail reform’s implementation.
The new supplemental data, however, contain arraignments going back to the beginning of 2019—an additional 200,000 cases—with reliable rearrest information through September 2021. The data are imperfect: most notably, superior courts enter the data set slowly. But they provide the first comprehensive picture of bail reform’s effects. (Readers interested in how I produced the analysis in this article can find replication code here.)
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