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wateringtheflowers t1_jcb3uaj wrote

Reply to comment by mowotlarx in Study shows those released under NY's bail reform laws are less likely to get rearrested by mowotlarx

I would just point out a few things. First, is that re-arrests for violent felony increased, and that is the one statistic that actually matters. Secondly, that “slight” increase occurred despite the fact that overall arrests decreased dramatically during the pandemic. Thirdly, this was basically a “study” funded by the Arnold Foundation, which states very clearly on its website that it is strongly in favor of bail reform: “We must reform every aspect of the pre-trial system from policing to bail…”. Fourthly, this wasn’t a study that was published in an academic journal after peer-review. It appears to be a self-published report. I’m all for using data to guide policy and legislative decisions. The data is what it is. But the way that data is interpreted and presented can introduce a lot of bias. This study could just have easily been titled “Study shows that re-arrests for violent felonies increased after bail reform.”

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chargeorge t1_jcb7ys4 wrote

> First, is that re-arrests for violent felony increased, and that is the one statistic that actually matters. Secondly, that “slight” increase occurred despite the fact that overall arrests decreased dramatically during the pandemic.

No, VFO re-arrests were down slightly, only among specific subgroups did the VFO re-arrest go up according to the study, for the other groups it was down. Because of that the overall VFO rate was lower.

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Yourgrandsonishere t1_jcbutap wrote

Study seems legit to me. Could you link your source stating that the Arnold Foundation funded it. Anybody who funds a study will absolutely take a position on the matter, but skewing the numbers and being disingenuous isn't hard to figure out. A lot of the data is public lol. Go and find out if your theory holds.

This is one of their key findings from the study:
"Beyond the aforementioned overall takeaways, bail reform had varying
recidivism effects depending on people’s charges and recent criminal
history."

This would support what some of your are saying. Bail reform isn't perfect but we needs these studies to be able to refine it. We are still disproportionately jailing minorities.

NYC has 8 million people accounted for, probably more. There will be crime, no if ands or buts, its just the way the world works.

But here we are on reddit, complaining as usual, sigh.

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wateringtheflowers t1_jcc1tvi wrote

Page 2 of the report says the study was funded by Arnold Foundation. Then go to Arnold Foundation’s website and see what causes they support.

I agree that the only valid takeaway from this study is that the data is mixed (but that’s not the kind of conclusion that is conducive to receiving additional funding from the Arnold Foundation). The relatively small differences in comparison groups from which the authors try to derive conclusions is completely outweighed by the fact that the comparison groups were not (and could not be) comparable, because one group was before the pandemic and the other was not. The effect of the pandemic on crime and policing in the city was far more significant than the effect of bail reform. If anything, I would guess that because arrests were down significantly during 2020, re-arrests would also be down. So an increase in re-arrests, even if slight, is something that needs to be looked into more carefully.

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matzoh_ball t1_jcdnfsg wrote

The report addresses potential confounding issues due to COVID. In a nutshell, clearance rates were down during 2020 and declined-prosecution rates were up in 2020, and both of those things went back to normal in 2021 (links to that are in the report in the “limitations” section). However, since they tracked re-arrest over two years for everyone, the “pandemic effect” affects (aka downward biases) the re-arrest rates for both the pre-reform group and the post-reform group.

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StrictDare210 t1_jccknyt wrote

I can assure you that to the people who aren’t rotting in Riker’s and/or getting rearrested (disproportionately impoverished minorities) the VFO statistic is not the only one that matters. And even if it is, you should be reading it a little more closely than you are before your race to undermine it. VFO was not up across the board and bail reform does not have to be the one band aid that makes it all go away. You concluded that the headline could be some other categorical statement because you’re lacking nuance, but in the other direction.

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