New York Rolled Back Bail Reform. What Will The Rest Of The Country Do?

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/04/23/in-new-york-s-bail-reform-backlash-a-cautionary-tale-for-other-states

The national drive to reduce jail and prison populations is getting an unexpected nudge from the coronavirus pandemic, as many cities and counties across the country try to reduce exposure to the virus in crammed, unsanitary jails. One of their first targets: bail.

In New Orleans, some city judges are reducing some bail amounts to one-tenth of what they would otherwise be to let some people out. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the jail’s occupancy has reached a record low as people deemed non-threatening are being released without bail.

This story was published in partnership with Politico.

To bail-reform advocates across America, this change is a no-brainer: Why incarcerate anyone, pandemic or no, just because they can’t post a cash bond? Their movement looked like a national wave just a couple of years ago, as states from Vermont and New Jersey to Alaska and Georgia rolled out new bail policies to reduce the number of people in jail. These ideas ranged from minor tweaks for only the lowest-level crimes to blanket eliminations of cash bail.

But just a few months ago, before the outbreak, that momentum hit a major roadblock. One of the most high-profile tests of bail reform, in New York state, sparked a political backlash and sent advocates into damage-control mode. In 2019, the New York legislature passed one of the most progressive bail-reform packages in the United States, abolishing bail for many misdemeanors and nonviolent crimes. Soon after the law went into effect, in January 2020, the New York Police Department released figures showing a spike in crime, and pointed the finger at the new, looser bail rules.

The crime figures have been disputed, but tabloid headlines and anti-reform voices in law enforcement jumped at the chance to fan the flames, and the new bail policies instantly lost popularity. The percentage of New Yorkers saying the changes would be good for the state dropped from 55 percent last year to 37 percent in January. Prominent politicians, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, backed a new bill to roll back many of the changes, which passed April 3.

Bail reformers across the country have been paying close attention. “New York is certainly a cautionary tale,” said Alec Karakatsanis, a reform advocate and executive director of the Civil Rights Corps, a criminal justice non-profit that has filed lawsuits challenging bail in several states.

Now many reformers across the country have begun regrouping and tweaking their plans in an effort to learn from past mistakes in bail reform packages, and looking hard at how to keep potential opponents in the fold. “Even if you win a great legislative battle against them,” said Karakatsanis, “it’s not like they'll just go away.”

In Illinois and Colorado, where legislators are working on—but haven’t passed—bail-reform bills, proponents have zeroed in on new political tactics like getting more buy-in from police and prosecutors and building in time to educate the courts and the general public to try to stem some of the pushback. Importantly, lawmakers elsewhere are also betting that a quirk unique to New York’s bail system made the state singularly vulnerable to a blowback—and they’re moving ahead in their own states undeterred.

Now, after the debate spurred by COVID-19, they might get their chance to deploy that new and improved playbook. “It was a needed disruption to the direction that we were going in, and further evidence that having so many people in jails, in New York or anywhere, is a threat to public health,” said Scott Roberts, senior criminal justice campaign director at the civil rights advocacy organization Color of Change. “That’s true under normal circumstances, and we see how that can really heighten at a moment's notice.”

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