Resources | Bail Reform in New York & Across the U.S.

Informed discourse and access to reliable information are crucial to navigate the complexities of bail reform and work towards a fair and effective justice system. New York’s bail reform law, passed in 2019, sought to decrease the use of pretrial detention, reduce the financial burdens of money bail, and provide community-based supports for individuals presumed innocent and awaiting the resolution of their criminal case.

To better inform the public, policymakers, and practitioners, DCJ has developed the following inventory of rigorous research and reports, providing reliable information and legal analysis, from New York State and other U.S. jurisdictions. This resource page will be updated periodically as more research becomes available.   

RESOURCE CATEGORIES

New York Bail Reform Explainers

Documented Results: Research and Evaluation on New York’s Reform

National Research: Major Studies of Interest

New York City Public Pretrial Data, Dashboards, & Tools

New York Bail Reform Explainers

The 2019 Reforms (passed April 2019, effective January 2020)

• Bail Reform in New York: Legislative Provisions and Implications for New York City (Center for Court Innovation, 2019)
• New York, New York: Highlights of the 2019 Bail Reform Law (Vera Institute of Justice, 2019)
• Bench Card: New York’s Bail Statute: Pretrial Options (Data Collaborative for Justice, updated in 2023 based on all three rounds of amendments)

The 2020 Amendments (passed April 2020, effective July 2020)

• Bail Reform Revisited: The Impact of New York’s Amended Bail Law on Pretrial Detention – Summary & Full Report (Center for Court Innovation, 2020)
• New York’s Latest Bail Law Changes Explained (Brennan Center for Justice, 2020)
• Assessing the Potential Impact of 2019 Bail Reforms on 2020 Criminal Cases (Data Collaborative for Justice, 2020)

The 2022 Amendments (passed April 2022, effective May 2022)

• FY 2023 New York State Budget’s Impact on Bail, Discovery, and Other Criminal Justice Reforms (New Yorkers United for Justice, 2022)
• How New York State Just Rolled Back Criminal Justice Reforms (New York Focus, 2022)

The 2023 Amendments (passed May 2023, effective June 2023)

• Explaining New York’s 2023 Bail Reform Amendments (Data Collaborative for Justice, 2023)

Documented Results: Research and Evaluation on New York’s Reform

Reform Impact on Judicial Decision-Making and Pretrial Detention

• Two Years In: 2020 Bail Reforms in Action in New York State (Data Collaborative for Justice, 2022)
• Supplemental Pretrial Release Data Summary Analysis: 2019-2021 (New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2022)
• NYC Bail Trends Since 2019 (New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, 2022)
• Pretrial Detention in New York (Envision Freedom Fund, 2022)
• Bail Reform in Action: Pretrial Release Outcomes in New York State, 2019-2020 (Data Collaborative for Justice, 2022)
• One Year Later: Bail Reform and Judicial Decision-Making in New York City (Center for Court Innovation, 2021)
• Death at Rikers: How NYC Judges Fueled the Swelling Jail Population (New York Focus, 2021)

Reform Impact on Jail Populations

• New York State Jail Population Brief, January 2019–June 2021 (Vera Institute of Justice, 2023)
• Decarceration in the Bail Reform Era: New York City’s Changing Jail Population Since 2019 (Data Collaborative for Justice, 2022)
• New York State Jail Population Brief, January 2019-December 2020 (Vera Institute of Justice, 2022)
• The Impact of New York Bail Reform on Statewide Jail Populations: A First Look (Vera Institute of Justice, 2021)

Reform Impact on Crime and Recidivism

• Does New York’s Bail Reform Law Impact Recidivism? A Quasi-Experimental Test in the State’s Suburban and Upstate Regions (Data Collaborative for Justice, 2024)
• Does Bail Reform Increase Crime in New York State: Evidence from Interrupted Time-Series Analyses and Synthetic Control Methods (University of Albany/Justice Quarterly, 2023)
• Does New York’s Bail Reform Law Impact Recidivism? A Quasi-Experimental Test in New York City (Data Collaborative for Justice, 2023)
• An Empirical Evaluation of the Impact of New York’s Bail Reform on Crime Using Synthetic Controls (SSRN, 2021)
• The Facts on Bail Reform and Crime Rates in New York State (Brennan Center for Justice, 2022, Updated in 2024)
• The Facts on Bail Reform and Crime in New York City (Center for Court Innovation, 2021)

Process Evaluations and Special Topic Studies

• Reform in Action: Findings and Recommendations from a 3-Year Process Evaluation of New York’s 2020 Criminal Legal Reforms (CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance, 2023)
• Justice, Safety, and Prosperity: New York’s Bail Reform Success Story (FWD.us, 2023)
• Racial Disparities in the Use of Jail Across New York City, 2016-2021 (Data Collaborative for Justice, 2023)
• Cost of Discretion: Judicial Decision-Making, Pretrial Detention, and Public Safety in New York City (Scrutinize, Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity, and Zimroth Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at NYU School of Law, 2023)
• Reform in Action: Reducing Reliance on Bail: Initial Findings on Implementing Criminal Legal System Reform in New York State (CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance, 2023)
• Reform in Action: Overview: Initial Findings on Implementing Bail & Other Key Criminal Legal System Reform in New York State (CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance, 2022)
• A Year of Unprecedented Change: How Bail Reform and COVID-19 Reshaped Court Practice in Five New York Counties (Vera Institute of Justice, 2022)
• A Broken Bond: How New York Judges are Getting Around Bail Reform (New York Focus, 2020)

Pretrial Supervision During and Prior to Bail Reform Implementation

• Reform in Action: Expanding Pretrial Services – Initial Findings on Implementing Pretrial Services Reform in New York State
  (CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance, 2023)
• Effectiveness of Varying Intensities of Pretrial Supervision – Findings from the Pretrial Justice Collaborative (MDRC, 2023)
• Supervised Release in Post-Reform New York: An Exploratory Analysis (Federal Probation, 2022)
• Supervised Release Five Years Later (CASES, Center for Court Innovation, CJA, 2022)
• Pursuing Pretrial Justice Through an Alternative to Bail: Findings from an Evaluation of New York City’s Supervised Release Program (MDRC, 2020)
• Pretrial Research Summary: Pretrial Monitoring (Advancing Pretrial Policy & Research, 2021)
• OCA Certified Pretrial Services Agencies (New York State Unified Court System)

Baseline Context: Pre-Reform Bail & Detention Trends

• Before Bail Reform: Pretrial Bail Decisions and Outcomes in New York’s Justice Courts (John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety, 2022)
• Pretrial Release Without Money: New York City, 1987-2020 (NYC Criminal Justice Agency, 2021)
• Annual Report 2019 (NYC Criminal Justice Agency, 2021)
• Trends in the Pretrial Jail Population in New York City, 2000-2019 (Data Collaborative for Justice, 2021)
• Women in New York City Jails, 1995-2019 (Data Collaborative for Justice, 2021)
• You’ve Been Arrested. Will You Get Bail? Can You Pay It? It May All Depend on Your Judge (FiveThirtyEight, 2018)

National Research: Major Studies of Interest

Bail Reform Evaluations in Other Jurisdictions

• Cross-Jurisdictional: Is Bail Reform Causing an Increase in Crime? (Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, 2023)
• Harris County, TX: The Effects of Misdemeanor Bail Reform (Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, 2022)
• Philadelphia, PA: Does Cash Bail Deter Misconduct? (SSRN, 2022)
• California: Coming Up Short: The Unrealized Promise of In re Humphrey (UCLA School of Law and Berkeley Law, 2022)
• Cook County, IL: Dollars and Sense in Cook County: Examining the Impact of General Order 18.8A on Felony Bond Court Decisions, Pretrial Release, and Crime (Loyola University, 2020)
• Georgia: Boots and Bail on the Ground: Assessing the Implementation of Misdemeanor Bail Reforms in Georgia (Georgia Law Review, 2020)
• New Jersey: Evaluation of Pretrial Justice System Reforms That Use the Public Safety Assessment: Effects of New Jersey’s Criminal Justice Reform (MDRC, 2019)
• Kentucky:
  • No Money Bail, No Problems? Trade-offs in a Pretrial Automatic Release Program (SocArXiv, 2022)
  • Assessing Risk Assessment in Action (Minnesota Law Review, 2019)
• Maryland: Advancing Bail Reform in Maryland: Progress and Possibilities (Princeton University School of Public & International Affairs, 2018)
• National Landscape: The Current State of Bail Reform in the United States: Results of a Landscape Analysis of Bail Reforms Across All 50 States (Harvard Kennedy School, 2021)

General Effects of Pretrial Detention on Criminal Convictions, Recidivism, & Racial Disparities

• Three Counties (county names de-identified): Locked Up and Awaiting Trial: A Natural Experiment Testing the Criminogenic and Punitive Effects of Spending a Week or More in Pretrial Detention (SSRN, 2023)
• Kentucky: The Hidden Costs of Pretrial Detention Revisited (Arnold Ventures, 2022)
• Miami, FL & Philadelphia, PA:
  • Racial Bias in Bail Decisions (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2018)
  • The Effects of Pretrial Detention on Conviction, Future Crime, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges (American Economic Review, 2018)
• New York City:
  • The Initial Collateral Consequences of Pretrial Detention (New York City Criminal Justice Agency, 2022)
  • Examining the Causal Effect of Pretrial Detention on Case Outcomes: A Judge Fixed Effect Instrumental Variable Approach (Journal of Experimental Criminology, 2022)
  • The Unintended Impact of Pretrial Detention on Case Outcomes: Evidence from New York City Arraignments (Journal of Law and Economics, 2017)
• Harris County, TX: The Downstream Consequences of Misdemeanor Pretrial Detention (Stanford Law Review, 2017)
• Philadelphia & Pittsburgh, PA: The Heavy Costs of High Bail: Evidence from Judge Randomization (Columbia University, 2016)

New York City Public Pretrial Data, Dashboards, & Tools

Datasets

• Pretrial Release Data (New York State Unified Court System)
• Daily Inmates in Custody (NYC Open Data)
• Pretrial Release Data (Updated September 2022, see “Pretrial Release” tab) (DCJS)

Dashboards

• People in Jail in New York City (Vera Institute of Justice)
• People in Jail in New York State (New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services)
• People in Community with Pending NYC Case (NYC Criminal Justice Agency)
• System Data—Arraignment (Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice)

Tools

• Release Assessment (NYC Criminal Justice Agency)
• What Doesn’t Get Measured Doesn’t Get Done: A Roadmap for Data Collection and Reporting in the Era of Bail Reform (NYC Criminal Justice Agency)

Cost of New York City Jail Incarceration

• NYC Department of Correction FYs 2011-21: Operating Expenditures, Jail Population, Cost Per Incarcerated Person, Staffing Ratios, Performance Measure Outcomes, and Overtime – (New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, 2021)
• A Look Inside the New York City Correction Budget – Policy Brief (2021) & Report (2022) (Vera Institute of Justice)
• The Cost of Incarceration in New York State – Focus on Counties Outside New York City – Full Report & County Fact Sheets (Vera Institute of Justice, 2021)