Bail Reform in New York

Challenge:

On April 1, 2019, New York passed a sweeping package of criminal legal reform legislation representing a major shift in how the state’s 62 counties make pretrial decisions. In an effort to create a fairer, equitable, and more effective criminal legal system, the legislation eliminated money bail and pretrial detention for a majority of misdemeanor and nonviolent felony charges, and required judges to also consider reducing reliance on these mechanisms for more serious charges. In addition to these changes, the reforms also ushered in major reforms to pretrial decision-making processes. In all, the legislation:

• Expanded eligibility criteria for appearance tickets, which are written notices to appear in court in response to an arrest as opposed to being booked into jail;

• Restricted the use of cash bail for misdemeanors and most non-violent felonies,

• Increased the use of pretrial services and supervision to support individuals now able to await trial in the community; and

• Overhauled requirements related to evidence sharing, also known as discovery, between prosecutors and defenders.

Through these various provisions, the legislation aimed to ensure alternatives to pretrial detention—not jail—became the default response to legal involvement to reduce over-incarceration and promote equitable pretrial decision-making. Through these mechanisms, the legislation created pathways to facilitate more efficient case processing and triaging so stakeholders could focus on significant charges while people who do not pose a threat to public safety can avoid incarceration.

Approach:

Momentum for these types of reform is growing across the country, and a more robust body of evidence is needed to both sustain it and ensure it has the intended results. The rollout of this comprehensive pretrial reform in January 2020 presented a huge opportunity to establish that evidentiary base. In 2019, Arnold Ventures approached CUNY ISLG to examine legislative implementation through an in-depth process evaluation that shows both the potential for impact when state pretrial legislation is done properly and how it can be effectively planned for and implemented. With this research, other jurisdictions can use New York’s successes and challenges as guideposts when implementing similar types of sweeping changes.

CUNY ISLG’s process evaluation aims to document—through a combination of interviews, focus groups, observations, and quantitative data—how criminal legal system agencies across the state adopted the legislation. These agencies include many that are key to the pretrial decision-making process, such as law enforcement, prosecution, defense, pretrial services (and sometimes probation), direct service providers, and individuals that have participated in pretrial supervision services. CUNY ISLG is exploring how the legislative requirements were implemented by key criminal legal system actors within and across sites, and examining lessons learned regarding the factors, circumstances, and strategies that facilitated (or hindered) successful implementation. For the purposes of this study, “successful implementation“ means a site and/or agency have met the legislative provisions and to achieve intended individual- and system-level outcomes, such as:

• increasing appearance tickets for predefined offenses; reducing reliance on pretrial detention;

• limiting bail to violent charges;

• increasing non-monetary conditions of release;

• maintaining high appearance rates and community safety; and

• increasing efficiencies throughout case processing

Progress:

Over the past 3 years, CUNY ISLG has conducted interviews and focus groups with over 220 criminal legal system actors and people involved in the criminal legal system from across the state, including from urban, suburban, and rural parts of downstate and upstate. The interviews and focus group process is structured in two waves: initial conversations as close to legislative enactment as possible (January 1, 2020), and follow-up conversations a minimum of one year after the initial interview. Contextual information gleaned from document reviews and administrative data were also reviewed to support themes emerging from these conversations. Furthermore, ISLG will be reviewing media coverage of bail reform to assess how these narratives shape public perceptions of its impacts and discussions of future amendments to the legislation.

In addition to a number of internal reports meant to be shared back with those agencies participating in the study, CUNY ISLG will release several public-facing materials, including:

• Reform in Action fact sheet series

  • Overview (November 2022)

  • Appearance Tickets (November 2022)

  • Bail (December 2022)

  • Pretrial Services (August 2023)

  • Discovery Reform (September 2023)

• Reform in the Media: Analyzing How Local Media Covered New York’s Criminal Legal Reform Narrative (October 2023)

• Reform in Action: Findings and Recommendations from a 3-Year Process Evaluation of New York's 2020 Criminal Legal Reforms (October 2023)

For more information, contact Jennifer Ferone, Associate Research Director, Jennifer.Ferone@islg.cuny.edu.