Not that I condone this shit, but they used chalk on a sidewalk. What tangible action could possibly be taken here? No property damage, and we have free speech.

There’s always exceptions but the vast majority of people who repeatedly miss court appearances have an arrest warrant issued and are eventually arrested. The fact that it was a big deal that Yuna Lee’s murderer had not been arrested is precisely part of the reason it was such a big deal.

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.

If you don’t show up for court - especially repeatedly - there’ll be an arrest warrant and you’ll be locked up.

I agree with you that the law can and should be improved. That said, the harm-harm guideline that was introduced with the bail amendments in July 2020 addresses a large swath of the “repeat offenders” who people are rightly concerned about.

No, it doesn’t. While the harm-harm rule is kinda imprecise, the basic idea is that every crime is a “harm” crime except for “victimless crimes” such as prostitution or drug crimes (though some judges may consider the sale of meth as a harm crime while other judges may not, so there’s still room for discretion). In any case, for example petit larceny (a misdemeanor) is a harm to property crime and would thus be a harm-harm crime. The same is true for many other misdemeanors.

Good catch! Yes, kinda makes sense that they’d only report the percentages of people who lost their job of people who had a job in the first place. Still, could be made more clear in their write up.

So, regardless of the job issues stat, it seems they base those likelihoods on the number of ppl who had a job at time of arrest:

> Over one in five participants who were employed at the time of arrest (n=1,031) were no longer employed when they were interviewed (n=219)

No, that would be to their disadvantage. The harm-harm rule doesn’t have anything to do with convictions, it’s about being arrested while having an open case, aka a case that did not yet lead to conviction, acquittal, or dismissal.

Dude I just corrected a minor detail, not defending or criticizing any policy here.

FWIW, in the scenario you refer to, my question would be why that guy hadn’t been sentenced to jail or prison for smashing someone’s head in. Bail reform has literally nothing to do with sentencing guidelines so your hypothetical scenario wouldn’t have anything to do with bail reform.

Not quite. They found an increase in re-arrest for those who had prior violent felony arrests in the two years leading up to their arraignment. Your point stands, but we might as well be accurate.

FWIW, there is a study on that, which uses survey data that was collected between 2019 and 2021: https://www.nycja.org/publications/the-initial-collateral-consequences-of-pretrial-detention

If you scroll a bit down on that page, you'll see an interactive bar chart that shows that 20.1% of respondents who were arrested and not detained at arraignment lost their job compared to 35.0% of respondents who were arrested and detained at arraignment.

The 2020 amendments that took effect in July 2020 made some cases bail eligible again, including so-called "harm-harm" cases, aka cases that involve the harm to person or property where the defendant has an open case that also falls under that category. This basically takes care of a large swath of these repeat offenders that you are rightly concerned about.

So for example, if someone is arrested for petit larceny and released without bail, and then they're arrested again while their first case is still open, the judge is allowed to set bail or detain that person.

If you're convicted for petit larceny your sentence is up to 1 year in jail. So if someone is released pretrial and he gets re-arrested for petit larceny, judges can still sentence that person to jail time.

Also, since the bail reform amendments that took effect in July 2020, judges can set bail on cases involving harm to person or property if the person has a pending case that also involves harm to a person or property. So if someone is arrested for petit larceny and released without bail, and then they get re-arrested for another petit larceny charge, the judge is allowed to set bail.

Yes, that's *technically* true. But if someone is arrested 100 times and never gets a jail or prison sentence and thus is out in the community again to reoffend, then you have to blame something other than bail reform for that.

Copying my reply to another person here:

If they commit crime after crime then they'd eventually be convicted and put in jail or prison. If they aren't convicted or only given super light sentences, then that has nothing to do with bail reform. Also, most people who *are* detained pretrial are only in jail for a few days since they generally make bail pretty quickly, meaning that they could reoffend almost immediately even if the judge sets bail. So the idea that the lack of pretrial detention creates all these repeat offenders is bogus.

If they commit crime after crime then they'd eventually be convicted and put in jail or prison. If they aren't convicted or only given super light sentences, then that has nothing to do with bail reform. Also, most people who *are* detained pretrial are only in jail for a few days since they generally make bail pretty quickly, meaning that they could reoffend almost immediately even if the judge sets bail. So the idea that the lack of pretrial detention creates all these repeat offenders is bogus.

>OCA admits to being unable to track recidivists in terms of rearrest. In their data set, if a defendant is rearrested 1x it counts as 1 arrest. BUT, importantly, if a defendant is rearrested 100x, it still only counts as 1 arrest. It is impossible for this dataset to paint an actual picture of recidivists who commit multiple crimes as it only counts them as 1 rearrest.

That's the *public* OCA dataset. OCA does have data on *all* re-arrests. But yes, their study doesn't address whether the *number* of re-arrests per person increased; nevertheless, it shows that a lot of critics have completely overblown the negative impacts of bail reform.

>Further, this report focuses only on 1 particular period - that is pre trial to disposition.

Not sure what you mean by that but they didn't only look at pretrial re-arrest, they looked at 2-year re-arrest rates, i.e, beyond the pretrial period in almost all cases.

​

>In my experience, the speedy trial discovery reforms lead to at least 60% of cases being thrown out due to failure to "certify" that all discovery "relating to the case" has been turned over to the defense. The rate of rearrest for those individuals who have had their cases tossed pre disposition because of speedy trial dismissals has not been accounted.

I assume by "thrown out" you mean dismissed? If so, then those cases are included in the results. All prosecuted cases are included, whether they were dismissed or not.

They're not lumped together though. For bail ineligible people (i.e., people where judges could no longer set bail due to bail reform), overall re-arrest rates (regardless of charge) and felony re-arrest rates went down, while violent felony re-arrest rates and firearm re-arrest rates didn't change (see p.13 of the report).

Not quite. Overall, violent felony re-arrest did not change - or might have slightly decreased - for people who judges can no longer set bail for or detain (see bar chart on p.13 and the table below on the same page).

Doesn't change the fact that there is certainly room for improvement, but the doomsday stories about the effects of bail reform on violent crime increases are certainly BS.

>So great, those that were a part of the bail/reform group who were initially arrested on a misdemeanor are less likely to be arrested while those on the bail/reform group who had pending case or arrested on a violent felony were more likely to be arrested.

Not quite. Those are people with *prior* violent felony arrests, not people whose *current* charge is a violent felony (since almost all of them would still be bail eligible).

I guess the headline tried to address the a very common criticism of bail reform, which is that it increased crime in NYC overall. Few critics make the distinction between different offender cohorts.

Also, the article itself does point out that there were re-arrest increases for certain cohorts.

Not quite. The table on p.17 shows that people with a *prior* violent felony re-arrest who were released were more likely to be re-arrested. There is no section in that table that shows stats for people with *current* violent felony charges, since almost all of them are still legally eligible for bail.

And FWIW, the authors of the actual study suggest potential changes to the existing law where they do make those distinctions:

​

>Preventing re-arrest in the future could potentially involve careful, targeted policy changes based on these results. For example, future legislation or policy might make fewer “high risk” individuals (e.g., people with a prior violent felony) subject to mandatory release, allowing for wider judicial discretion in considering bail; or might enhance the range of non-monetary conditions for supporting “high risk” individuals. (To avoid misinterpretation, we are not embracing weaker decision-making standards that might compromise due process, undermine the presumption of innocence, or contradict legal precedents concerning when bail or pretrial detention are permissible.)

> On the other end of the spectrum, it could benefit public safety if legislation or policy encouraged the release of more bail-eligible people charged with relatively low-level offenses or with no or only minor criminal history, given that the incapacitation effects of incarceration (most people who face bail end up in pretrial detention) appear to be outweighed by its adverse “criminogenic” effects for these subgroups.

> Alternatively, armed with the knowledge that, in totality, the bail elimination provisions of the original reforms reduced recidivism, and reducing the use of bail in cases legally eligible for it had little net effect in either direction, policymakers would be justified on public safety grounds in avoiding further legislative or policy changes while awaiting additional rigorous studies over longer tracking periods.

Violent felony or firearm re-arrest didn't increase; it didn't change at all due to bail reform. Look at the bar chart on page 13 of the report.

Violent felony re-arrest didn't increase though; it didn't change at all due to bail reform (or might have been gone down). Look at the bar chart on page 13 and the table below.

I’ve seen this type of behavior all around brooklyn

NYPD cops start at below 50k. SF cops start at just below 100k. Yes, NYPD are paid shit and we’re getting what we pay for.