5 questions answered about changes to New York's bail laws

Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul got some of the changes to bail laws they’ve been asking for this week when the state legislature approved a $229 billion budget deal.

They said the changes will make New Yorkers safer by giving judges more latitude to require social support for people awaiting trial, and send them to jail when necessary. Opponents of the changes said they don’t make the public safer, and will lead to more detainees at the troubled Rikers Island.

It was the third round of rollbacks to a 2019 legislative package that was intended to reduce the number of people kept in jail while awaiting trial by barring judges from setting bail for low-level crimes.

It’s a lot of information to keep up with. Here are some key takeaways:

What will the changes do, in a nutshell?

They will give judges more freedom to monitor and hold people accused of crimes. For the last several years, judges have been required to impose the “least restrictive” conditions to ensure someone will return to court. The new rules would eliminate that requirement and give judges more discretion to set the conditions they think are appropriate.

The changes also make it more clear that judges can require mental health and chemical dependence treatment. They also make it clear that judges can combine bail with other conditions of release. That means that a judge could set bail, but also specify that if a person posts bail they will have to follow other requirements, like wearing a GPS monitor or meeting regularly with a case worker.

What do supporters of the changes hope they will achieve?

Hochul said the new language will allow judges to look at the big picture when they decide what they need to do to make sure someone returns to court.

Hochul said the changes are also meant to encourage judges to connect people with rehabilitative programming, like substance abuse treatment and anger management classes.

Tonawanda City Court Chief Judge Mark Saltarelli said he’s happy judges will have more discretion.

“We know how to deal with these cases,” said Saltarelli, who is president of the New York State Association of City Court Judges. “I don’t know why the legislature underestimates the abilities of judges to do their job.”

What do opponents of the measure say?

Reform advocates have accused the governor of bowing to political rhetoric and tabloid headlines about bail laws leading to a rise in crime, instead of following data reports that have found bail reform has not significantly increased the number of people who are rearrested while awaiting trial — and in some cases has even made it less likely someone will be rearrested.

“New Yorkers need and deserve real solutions to community safety,” said Katie Schaffer, director of advocacy and organizing at the Center for Community Alternatives, in a statement. “Instead, this budget will serve only to undermine key civil rights protections and to destabilize more people and families.”

Some legislators voted against changes to the bail laws, including Rep. Latrice Walker (D—Brooklyn), who went on a hunger strike to urge her colleagues not to roll back the reforms she helped to implement.

“I will not be among those subjecting more people to the trauma that comes with being locked up pretrial,” she said in a statement released on Twitter.

Public defenders have also criticized what they’re calling a “rollback” of bail reform. In a press release, the city’s six major defender services said Hochul “hijacked the budget process” to make the changes without “meaningful” input from the public.

“Any effort to address public safety in the budget should have focused on investing resources and funding in communities,” the defender groups said in a statement. “The ‘tough on crime’ punishment paradigm embraced by this budget has never made any of us safer.

How could this affect the crisis on Rikers Island?

It’s too soon to say whether updates to the law will increase the number of people who are incarcerated while awaiting trial. But advocates worry that, if they aren’t required to impose the “least restrictive” conditions, judges may feel pressure to hold more people in jail rather than risk the possibility that they could be blamed if the person commits another crime and the judge.

During the de Blasio administration, the City Council agreed to close Rikers by 2027 and instead send people to smaller jails in each of the boroughs, except Staten Island. But that plan requires the city to substantially shrink its jail population — and it’s already behind schedule.

Meanwhile, city jails are in a state of crisis. Last year, 19 people died in custody or just after they were released, marking the deadliest year for New York City jails since 1996. Slashings and stabbings spiked. People also spent far more time pretrial on Rikers than the national average.

Reform advocates said the best-case scenario is that changes to the law have minimal to no effect on the number of people behind bars.

“Worst case scenario is we’re going to continue to have rising jail populations,” said Jullian Harris-Calvin with the Vera Institute of Justice, adding that more people in jail could mean more deaths in custody. “The conditions are going to continue to worsen and the city is not going to be able to close Rikers Island.”

What challenges could the changes pose to the court system?

Changes to the bail laws could also strain funding and capacity for jail alternatives, like supervised release and rehabilitative programming.

But experts warn that opening the doors to expanded use of these programs without putting money behind it could overwhelm the system. The Albany Times Union has reported that supervised release programs are already struggling to keep up with higher case loads since the 2019 bail reforms took effect.

“The language of the bill is very supportive of the concept,” said Daniel Ades, Center for Court Innovation New York legal policy director. “The financial investment needs to support it just as strongly in order for this to work.”

Jon Campbell contributed reporting.