A recent study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice shows a whopping 66% of individuals with a prior arrest who were detained and released in New York’s suburban and upstate communities as a result of changes in the state’s bail laws went on to be re-arrested within two years.
“In other words, career criminals act like career criminals when there are few consequences,” said Will Barclay, the leader of the Assembly Republicans, at a rally calling for a repeal of the state’s cashless bail system. The conference urged Gov. Kathy Hochul to attach a provision to change the criminal justice system to upcoming budget legislation in the same way her Democrat successor, Andrew Cuomo, did to approve cashless bail.
“If the data and outcry from law enforcement professionals are not enough to convince you this problem is spiraling out of control, consider Gov. Hochul’s announcement to deploy 750 National Guard troops to quell subway-related crime in New York City,” continued Barclay, an upstate lawmaker. “No matter how you slice it, there is no way to look at what is happening in New York and think we are on the right track. The numbers speak for themselves; the incidents of dangerous individuals being turned loose on communities make it clear: these policies don’t work.”
As crime spiraled out of control in New York, especially in the city’s subways, Gov. Hochul acknowledged the problem on the “The View,” saying she inherited cashless bail “from my predecessor and the legislature before. They took the bail laws and watered them down to make it impossible for judges to look at the whole picture of the crime and the person.”
According to the John Jay findings, “The reduced use of bail for legally eligible cases tended to increase recidivism among people charged with violent felonies and people with a recent arrest. The starkest and most consistent recidivism increases across both research designs were among people with a recent prior violent felony arrest and among people currently charged with violent felony offenses who had a recent criminal history.”
“Simply put, state officials who block common-sense changes to cashless bail have blood on their hands,” said Assemblyman Joseph DeStefano (R, C-Medford). “At the very least, judges should be given discretion in setting bail so that violent felons with extensive rap sheets aren’t put back on the street hours after committing their latest crime.”
Suffolk District Attorney Raymond Tierney has also been an outspoken advocate of repealing cashless bail, as well as the discovery rules he said places an undue burden on prosecutors and law enforcement. According to Tierney, under the Democrats’ law, a suspect out with no bail can obtain crime scene and witness information gathered by investigators, which can put victims at risk.
“We are going to do everything we can to protect the public. We've added police officers, we've added detectives,” said Suffolk County Executive Edward Romaine. “But what's most important from my point of view is that the laws of the State of New York must change. Cashless bail for the most blatant misdemeanors and felonies must be repealed, and we must allow for judicial discretion.”
Tierney and Romaine, along with a bipartisan group of Suffolk’s elected officials, joined together to express outrage over four suspects arrested for illegally disposing of body parts and destroying evidence could not be held on bail under the current law. The suspects in the grisly “Babylon Body Parts” case were released only with ankle monitors as investigators build a case in the murder of Donna R. Conneely, 59, with a last known address in Yonkers, and a male victim, also in his 50s, who has not been named.
The results of the John Jay study also indicated that people in the bail reform group were more quickly re-arrested for a firearm charge than people in the comparison group. Additionally, for people charged with nonviolent felonies, eliminating bail was associated with increases in any re-arrest, felony re-arrest, and Violent Felony Offense re-arrest, in addition to firearm re-arrest. “Likewise, survival analyses showed that release was associated with an increased re-arrest risk across all four outcomes,” the report stated.