A recent study by a UAlbany School of Criminal Justice professor and Ph.D. recipient concluded that New York’s bail reform law had little impact on crime rates. The debate around bail reform has been heated in both New York and the United States overall. Supporters of the reform argue that a cash bail system is unfair to low-income defendants, while opponents maintain that setting bail for those arrested helps prevent crime. In 2019, New York lawmakers eliminated bail for most misdemeanor and some non-violent felony charges, allowing the accused to be released until their court hearing or released with certain conditions, such as electronic monitoring. However, an amendment in July 2020 expanded the list of offenses for which cash bail could be required.
The SCJ study, “Does Bail Reform Increase Crime in New York State: Evidence from Interrupted Time-Series and Synthetic Control Methods,” was published earlier this month in Justice Quarterly. Led by Sishi Wu, who received her Ph.D. from SCJ in April, it’s the first study to evaluate the effects of New York’s bail reform law on the entire state and “the first attempt to disentangle the effects of bail reform and national historic events” such as the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Wu and co-author David McDowall, a distinguished teaching professor at SCJ.
According to their research, bail reform did not cause an increase in crime. However, murder, larceny, and auto theft did increase after the implementation of bail reform.
“We used data from the New York State index crimes, consisting of monthly crime counts for seven offenses: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft,” Wu said. “Monthly crime data from other states were also collected from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program to create a control group to compare with New York.”
The goal of bail reform was to reduce the population in state jails, which was achieved from 2019 to 2020. However, during the same time period, there was a 1% increase in violent crimes and a 47% increase in murders in the state. It’s possible that these increases were a result of pandemic-related disruptions such as unemployment and lack of social services.
To account for the pandemic’s impact, the authors of a study compared New York’s crime data to other states similarly affected by the pandemic that did not change their bail laws. The results showed that there was no statistically significant increase in crime in New York, with only a slight difference of 0.02 more murders, 6.16 more larcenies, and 1.16 more motor vehicle thefts per 100,000 people per month compared to the control group.
“Using findings such as ours, legislators and stakeholders can better address public safety concerns when continuing the implementation of bail reform,” McDowall said.
