Bail reform, like in New York, does not increase crime, the Brennan Center reports

Unlike those who claim it, reforms to eliminate, reduce or facilitate bail are not associated with an increase in crimesaccording to a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice.

“This report dismisses theories linking bail reform to recent increases in crime,” one report concludes. “We found no evidence to support such a connection, even after evaluating different types of reform in jurisdictions across the country.”

Critics of bail reforms say they have contributed to more crime. in cities, but the report, which examines dozens of jurisdictions, including New York and New Jersey, dismisses those assertions.

“In fact, in most cases, judges are allowed to give priority to public safety, not to affect money,” the report says.

Criticism of the reforms increased after the Covid-19 pandemic, when crime increased, but experts Terry-Ann Craigie and Ames Grawert, the authors of the report, put these claims to the test with to assess how criminal movements behaved.

“So far, Researchers have evaluated bail reform, largely, in individual cities or states.found little evidence that these policies increased crime,” the report says. “This study is the first to use data from dozens of jurisdictions across the country to demonstrate the causal effect of bail reform on crime trends.”

A Brennan Center for Juste analysis compares serious crimes from 2015 to 2021 in 22 cities that had some form of bail reform underway with 11 others that did not have a similar plan .

“The study focuses first on all serious crimes in all jurisdictions and then on specific types of crimes,” he noted.

In New York, a reform was implemented in 2020 that eliminated cash bail and required it to be for non-violent crimes.

“In other cases, judges must set the most restrictive conditions that ‘reasonably ensure’ they will return to court,” the report says.

Various crimes are investigated, such as those against property, violent crimes and theft.

“We evaluated the cities (Buffalo, Chicago, Houston, Newark and New York) where the reforms had the greatest impact on how and when a trust was established,” he said. We compared crime trends in these five cities with those in cities that had not implemented bail reform and removed the other cities that had implemented reforms the function from the sample. Again, no statistically significant effects emerged.