New York Bail Law Gets More Stringent in State Budget Deal - Bloomberg

The agreement, which faced fierce opposition from reform advocates, will likely increase the population of people in jail before their trials.

New York is poised to alter its bail laws as part of a $220 billion budget agreement, despite opposition from leading lawmakers and criminal justice reform advocates that led to delays in passing an on-time budget.

Fierce debate over the issue pushed lawmakers past an April 1 deadline and complicated Governor Kathy Hochul’s first and only crack at budget talks ahead of a June primary and potential November election bid.

The last-minute wrangling was over a 2019 law that eliminated cash bail and mandated the release of people arrested for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies while they await their court dates. The new changes will likely mean more people will be kept in jail before their court dates.

Both the state and New York City saw reductions in jail population with the bail revisions, but critics tied the reform to an uptick in crime, despite a lack of evidence.

In the final compromise budget, lawmakers agreed for the first time to give judges more discretion in deciding bail based on several factors, including an individual’s history of gun use, whether they were charged with causing serious harms and if they have violated a restraining order. However, the legislature refused to introduce a new “dangerousness” standard into bail considerations, a move that advocates said would increase the racial disparities already plaguing the criminal justice system.

Lawmakers also made hate crimes and certain gun offenses bail-eligible, and will allow judges to set bail for individuals who are accused of certain offenses against another person or property theft. Separately, they will tweak the discovery process by giving judges more discretion over whether or not to dismiss cases, even when prosecutors fail to meet some discovery deadlines. They will also give prosecutors the ability to pursue some criminal cases against minors until they turn 21 and lower the threshold for gun trafficking charges.

The exact language for the bills has not yet been released and is still subject to change.

The changes come as the New York City Police Department vows a renewed focus on quality-of-life offenses like public drinking, marijuana sales, public urination and dice games.

Criminal justice reform advocates and lawmakers, including state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, had publicly denounced the proposed changes to the law, arguing that the data doesn’t support a rollback.

Hochul agreed with that assessment in part, writing in a March op-ed that the bail reform effort had helped reverse some of the inequities in the criminal justice system and that it shouldn’t be blamed for an increase in violence that’s also affecting cities across the country. Yet, she still pushed for changes to the law.

“We’re not here to undo the progress that was made in the past — it’s never been my objective and never will be,” Hochul said at remarks announcing the budget deal. The governor added that the changes were meant to assuage New Yorkers who are concerned with the uptick in crime. “We have to establish that foundation of security once again and we can do it while protecting the rights of individuals.”

Details of Hochul’s plan — which urged lawmakers to implement more restrictive bail provisions, lower the age to be tried in criminal court for gun possession from 18 to 16, amend the state’s discovery laws and allow judges to consider “dangerousness” in bail deliberations — leaked to the press two weeks before the April 1 budget deadline.

The leak set off a contentious, last-minute debate about the 2020 bail reform. Both Stewart-Cousins and Heastie argued that introducing sweeping changes late in negotiations would delay the budget. And it did. Negotiations over the provisions pushed a deal on the budget a week beyond the deadline.

A report from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander found that the law has not led to any uptick in rearrests of those who are released.

Last year, 14,545 people were subject to bail, down 41% from 2019, according to Lander’s report. Despite that drop, 96% of people who were allowed to return to the community while awaiting trial were not rearrested in December 2021, the same percentage as in January 2020 and up slightly from 95% in January 2019.

In recent months, New York City has had high-profile cases of individuals who committed offenses while on supervised release. A man who was facing multiple charges for theft and a hate crime later allegedly smeared feces on the head and face of a woman in the city’s subway system. But those incidents shouldn’t color policy decisions, state Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes said during deliberations.

“Unfortunately, some people use anecdotal stories and misleading information to imply that pretrial release is a get-out-of-jail-free card for hardened criminals,” she said in a statement. “But that’s not true.”

source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-08/bail-law-gets-tougher-in-new-york-state-budget-deal

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