Assembly Speaker: Bail Reform Used as ‘Scapegoat’ for Rise in Crime, Data Has No Context

NEW YORK NOW – Meeting Speaker Carl Heastie pushed again on claims Tuesday that the rise in violent crime in New York has been a results of the state’s bail reform legislation, which eradicated the choice of money bail for many lower-level and nonviolent costs two years in the past.

Chatting with reporters in Albany, Heastie mentioned the bail reform legislation was getting used as a “scapegoat” for a national rise in crime and a spike in gun violence.

“A part of my frustration is that when something dangerous that occurs, it’s acquired to be bail reform’s fault,” Heastie mentioned. “There’s an entire lot of issues occurring, and it’s really easy to scapegoat it onto bail.”

Opponents of the bail reform legislation, largely Republicans, have claimed that it’s linked to the state’s recent rise in violent crime. There hasn’t been any nonpartisan, crucial evaluation of that declare.

However Democrats are below new stress to take a second have a look at the bail reform legislation this yr after new New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams said this week that he needed the Legislature to amend the statute.

Proper now, the legislation requires judges to launch defendants charged with most lower-level and nonviolent offenses below the lease restrictive means needed, and with out money bail.

Adams, like others who’ve advised tweaks to the legislation, needs the Legislature to provide judges extra discretion at arraignment over whether or not a defendant is launched with out bail, or stored in jail earlier than their case is resolved.

However a number of the lawmakers who have been concerned within the preliminary negotiations over the bail legislation three years in the past, together with Heastie, have mentioned that concept may backfire.

The intention of the bail legislation, they’ve mentioned, was to take away discretion from judges who might, via implicit or realized bias, resolve pretrial outcomes with a disproportionately damaging influence on defendants of colour.

Handing that discretion again to judges, who would then be tasked with assessing somebody’s so-called “dangerousness,” or risk to public security, may result in the identical disproportionate outcomes, Heastie mentioned Tuesday.

“I feel whenever you begin placing again in folks’s private, decide’s private opinions, private ideas, after they have a look at a whole scenario somebody might have, you begin to come again to probably having some uneasiness,” Heastie mentioned.

About 2 p.c of these launched after being charged with an offense that was beforehand bail-eligible have been rearrested on a violent felony between July 2020 and June 2021, according to data released by the state final month.

That information level has been used on each side of the problem as a way to both assist or oppose the bail reform legislation.

Heastie mentioned, although, that the information doesn’t embrace context on what these outcomes have been like earlier than the state’s bail reform legislation was enacted. In different phrases, have been defendants, out on bail, rearrested on the similar fee earlier than the legislation took impact.

“I can’t think about that 100% of individuals earlier than we did bail reform didn’t commit different crimes, as a result of judges have let folks out,” Heastie mentioned. “Some folks have paid bail and nonetheless have dedicated crime.”

Senate Majority Chief Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Westchester, has mentioned there’s at present no urge for food amongst a majority of members in her convention to make adjustments to the bail legislation.