New York Metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander simply issued an evaluation of the state’s 2019 bail regulation. And the disaster, in accordance with Lander, just isn’t that crime has skyrocketed — it’s that too many individuals are nonetheless being held in jail. Buckle your seatbelts.
Essentially the most obtrusive drawback with Lander’s report is that it claims bail reform hasn’t affected metropolis crime charges — however nowhere does it cite metropolis crime statistics. For the report, Mr. Comptroller, there have been 319 murders in 2019, earlier than bail reform took impact; there have been 468 in 2020 and 485 in 2021, the very best numbers since 2011.
General crime to this point this yr is up 45% over final yr, fueled primarily by a 60% rise in grand larceny and an 85% rise in automotive theft — coincidentally, two prices for which judges will not be allowed to set bail beneath the 2019 regulation.
Nowhere within the report is the phrase “recidivism.” Nowhere is there an evaluation of the greater than 2,000 profession criminals launched beneath the 2019 regulation and their prison exercise since then.
And nowhere does the comptroller cite statistics revealed by the Workplace of Court docket Administration, which present that felony defendants with prior convictions or pending instances sprung on supervised launch or non-monetary launch — because of bail reform — are rearrested at a 43% charge whereas their instances are pending. Defendants charged with residential housebreaking launched on NMR are rearrested at a 57% charge.
And these numbers simply present the rearrest charge, not the reoffending charge. Defendants don’t get arrested for each crime they commit. In reality, most of them beat the raps for many of their crimes. Simply have a look at the numbers: There have been virtually 13,000 Gotham burglaries in 2021; simply 300 individuals charged with housebreaking are being held on Rikers Island.
One way or the other this OCA knowledge, available on its Site, by no means made it into the comptroller’s report. Both the workplace noticed the stats and ignored them or it didn’t know they existed. Both manner, it’s shoddy work.
As an alternative, Lander cites a single statistic from the Prison Justice Company displaying that in December 2021, there have been 41,000 individuals with a case pending in New York Metropolis courts. This quantity consists of individuals arrested for the primary time and for minor offenses who would by no means have had bail set beneath the outdated regulation. He notes 4% of that 41,000 obtained rearrested that month, basically the identical as earlier than bail reform.
It’s a really deceptive stat. A defendant arrested 3 times, for instance, is barely counted as soon as. However extra vital: Crime is up and arrests are down from 2019. So much more individuals are getting away with crime than earlier than.
Nonetheless, even that 4% would possibly imply that about 1,640 individuals with instances pending in December 2021 obtained rearrested that month. And the report approvingly states that just one% of them get rearrested every month for a violent felony.
That involves about 5,000 violent felonies a yr dedicated by individuals awaiting trial. I assume these numbers don’t imply a lot in the event you aren’t one of many victims.
No one is saying we should always jail everyone for each crime. However we will determine the recidivists amongst us. We are able to enable judges to remand defendants who’re a hazard or liable to reoffending. But as a substitute Lander applauds town for releasing them, with concurrent rises in crime, and even recommends the discharge of two,000 extra.
Bail reform was designed to launch extra individuals from jail. And it did. These being held on bail had in depth prison data or have been charged with very critical crimes.
The police made virtually 180,000 arrests in 2019. When bail reform was handed on April 1, 2019, 7,822 of New York Metropolis’s 8.6 million individuals have been in custody. Hardly “mass incarceration.”
The individuals who can pay the worth of the travesty of bail reform are poor individuals of shade, who’re overwhelmingly the victims of crime on this metropolis, particularly violent crime.
Albany lawmakers who handed this laws should admit they have been unsuitable or acknowledge that the rise in crime and the 1000’s of further crime victims are an appropriate value of their progressive ideology. They’ll by no means try this. However merely saying, “Transfer alongside, nothing to see right here,” just isn’t an appropriate response.
Jim Quinn was government district legal professional within the Queens DA’s workplace, the place he served for 42 years.
