No statistical evidence that bail reform affects crime rates – Our Time Press

By Mary Alice Miller
The Brennan Center for Justice recently released an investigative report that concluded there is no evidence that bail reforms affect crime rates. The report, “Bail Reform and Public Safety, Evidence From 33 Cities,” is the first national study to examine how bail reforms implemented by some cities and states have affected crime rates.
The report refutes theories linking bail reform to the recent rise in crime.

According to the study, the findings “hold even when distinguishing between different types of crimes and different types of reforms. These results reinforce studies of individual jurisdictions that have found little or no relationship between bail reform and crime. They demonstrate that political attacks on bail reform have no basis in evidence.”

At a public announcement of the study, Mireya Navarro, editor in chief of the Spanish-language counterpart of the Brennan Center for Justice, pointed to the case of Sandra Bland, who was on her way from Illinois to Texas to a new job when she was stopped by a police officer for not signaling while changing lanes. The minor encounter escalated. “She ended up in jail, desperately trying to find someone to help her pay the $5,000 bail. She had a new job, but three days later she was found hanged in her jail cell,” Navarro said.

Ames Grawert, a senior attorney in the Brennan Center's Justice Program who leads research on crime trends and the collateral costs of mass incarceration, recalled Kalief Browder, a young man who spent several years on Riker's Island for allegedly stealing a backpack until the charges were dropped. “He spent several of those years in solitary confinement,” Grawert said. “Unfortunately, when he left Riker's Island, he took his own life and committed suicide, which is said to be in part due to the trauma he experienced on Riker's Island.”

Grawert added: “When we talk about reforming our bail system, what we're really trying to do is make sure that injustices like this never happen again. And that people are not subjected – especially unnecessarily – to the rigors of prison. We know from our research that prison can have very extreme, long-term consequences. People can lose their jobs. People can lose their homes. They can't live with their children anymore.”

Navarro said: “In the United States, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty, but the prisons are full of people who shouldn't be there, and one of the main reasons for that is because they don't have enough money to pay bail. The system favors those who have money, and so many states have changed their laws to allow more people with less ability to pay to be released while they await trial of their case.”

Critics of these bail reforms blamed them for this increase due to the increase in violent crime during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The Brennan Center decided to investigate this and compare crime rates in states that made bail changes to states that did not, to find out what effect bail reform actually had on crime.

Using the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports from 2015 to 2022, the Brennan study found that cities with bail reform had lower average crime rates for index crimes (murder, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and theft) than cities without bail reform.

If there is a relationship between bail reform and crime rates, the effect would be most pronounced in cities with bolder reforms that fundamentally reshape bail policies.

For all types of reforms, the Brennan Center found “no statistically significant differences in crime trends after the reform. These results held when evaluating their effects on crime rates overall, as well as on property crime, violent crime, and theft. We then examined the cities – Buffalo, Chicago, Houston, Newark, and New York City – where the reforms had the greatest impact on how and when bail was set.

We compared crime trends in these five cities with those in cities that had not implemented bail reform and excluded the other cities that had implemented reforms from the sample. Again, no statistically significant effects were found.”
Craigie added: “One thing has changed since we started this study: the violent crime rate is going down.”

The Brennan report suggests that further studies are needed “to test other theories about the interaction of bail reform with crime. For example, it is possible that the reform will lead to an increase in crime that takes several years to occur. But it could also lead to a long-term reduction in crime. Misdemeanor bail reform could shift law enforcement resources from less serious crimes to more serious ones.

Pretrial monitoring programs, often implemented or expanded in parallel with bail reform, could reduce pretrial rearrests if implemented with adequate funding and care is taken to avoid increased surveillance of people who would have previously been released. Bail reform could also reduce the collateral consequences of incarceration that prevent people from meeting basic life needs and thus make recidivism more likely. These theories, unlikely to be observed in the relatively short period examined here, are worth examining as more data become available.”

The report states: “The best explanations for the rise in violent crime during the pandemic lie beyond bail policies, as do the best solutions for reducing violent and property crime. Policymakers charged with ensuring public safety should focus on addressing specific social and political problems that have worsened during the pandemic and continue to this day. For example, they should expand access to mental health and substance abuse treatment programs.”

Grawert said, “The goal of bail reform is not to make judges not consider public safety. It's about removing money from the equation. No one should be sent to jail just because they have $500 in their bank account.”