Background - In 2019, New York State (NYS) passed bail reform legislation that, with limited exceptions, eliminated money bail and pretrial detention for almost all misdemeanors

Research Question Type something Did bail reform increase the crime rate in New York State? Study Strategy To determine whether the NYS bail reform law affected crime rates, the study’s authors used time-series analyses. [...] These analyses compared the average of the monthly crime rates per 100,000 people from the period before the bail reform was enacted (January 2017 to January 2020) to the average of the monthly crime rates after the law took effect (February 2020 to September 2021). [...] Findings The time-series analyses found that murder, larceny, and motor vehicle “Previous studies either did not theft rates increased after the bail consider the effect of the reform, while rates of rape, robbery, pandemic or did not distinguish aggravated assault, and burglary were the effect of bail reform from the unchanged. [...] The increases in the effect of the pandemic. [...] This monthly rates of the three crimes research shows that the rates of post-reform were higher in NYS than murder, larceny, and motor the “synthetic” NYS, indicating that vehicle theft increased after the the bail reform law directly bail reform, but the contribution contributed to these increases.