By Kristine Denman, Ella Siegrist, Joel Robinson, Ashleigh Maus, Jenna Dole

Like other jurisdictions and states across the nation, New Mexico recently reformed its bail system. In 2016, New Mexico voters passed a constitutional amendment intended to ensure that defendants are not detained solely because they are unable to post bond, while simultaneously protecting the safety of the community. The New Mexico Statistical Analysis Center has engaged in an ongoing project to assess bail reform efforts in New Mexico. The current report focuses on one aspect of bail reform: the use of preventative detention.1

Albuquerque, NM: New Mexico Statistical Analysis Center. Institute for Social Research, 2021. 50p.

By Sandra G. Mayson,. Lauren Sudeall, Guthrie Armstrong and Anthony Potts

This Article presents a mixed-methods study of misdemeanor bail practice across Georgia in the wake of reform. We observed bail hearings and interviewed system actors in a representative sample of fifty-five counties to assess the extent to which pretrial practice conforms to legal standards clarified in Senate Bill 407 and Walker v. Calhoun. We also analyzed jail population data published by county jails and by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. We found that a handful of counties have made promising headway in adhering to law and best practices, but that the majority have some distance to go. Most counties assessed do not assure a bail hearing within forty-eight hours of arrest, provide counsel at the initial bail hearing, consistently evaluate arrestees’ financial circumstances, or guarantee release within forty-eight hours of arrest for those who cannot pay bail. In a combined eighteen counties, 37% of misdemeanor arrestees remained in jail for at least three days after arrest. In DeKalb County, 53% of all those arrested on misdemeanor charges between 2000 and 2019 were jailed for three days or more, but the annual rate has declined from 63% in 2009 to 26.5% in 2019.Per capita pretrial detention rates varied widely by county in 2019, with most of the higher rates in the southern portion of the state. Overall, the qualitative and quantitative data demonstrate both progress and substantial variation by county.

Philadelphia: Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law. 2020. 63p.

By Paul Heaton

This research summary reports results from an analysis of the effects of misdemeanor bail reform, focusing on a natural experiment in Harris County, Texas that abruptly increased pretrial release rates.

Philadelphia: Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, 2022. 51p.

By Angela Zhou, Andrew Koo, Nathan Kallus, Ren´e Ropac , Richard Peterson , Stephen Koppel‖, and Tiffany Bergin

We conduct an empirical evaluation of the impact of New York’s bail reform on crime. New York State’s Bail Elimination Act went into effect on January 1, 2020, eliminating money bail and pretrial detention for nearly all misdemeanor and nonviolent felony defendants. Our analysis of effects on aggregate crime rates after the reform informs the understanding of bail reform and general deterrence. We conduct a synthetic control analysis for a comparative case study of impact of bail reform. We focus on synthetic control analysis of post-intervention changes in crime for assault, theft, burglary, robbery, and drug crimes, constructing a dataset from publicly reported crime data of 27 large municipalities. Our findings, including placebo checks and other robustness checks, show that for assault, theft, and drug crimes, there is no significant impact of bail reform on crime; for burglary and robbery, we similarly have null findings but the synthetic control is also more variable so these are deemed less conclusive.

Unpublished paper, 2021. 64p.

By the Criminal Justice Policy Program, Harvard Law School

Bail reform presents a historic challenge – and also an opportunity. Bail is historically a tool meant to allow courts to minimize the intrusion on a defendant’s liberty while helping to assure appearance at trial. It is one mechanism available to administer the pretrial process. Yet in courtrooms around the country, judges use the blunt instrument of secured money bail to ensure that certain defendants are detained prior to their trial. Money bail prevents many indigent defendants from leaving jail while their cases are pending. In many jurisdictions, this has led to an indefensible state of affairs: too many people jailed unnecessarily, with their economic status often defining pretrial outcomes. Money bail is often imposed arbitrarily and can result in unjustified inequalities. When pretrial detention depends on whether someone can afford to pay a cash bond, two otherwise similar pretrial defendants will face vastly different outcomes based merely on their wealth…. All of this builds on sustained attention from experts and advocacy groups who have long called for fundamental reform of cash bail.3 As policymakers across the political spectrum seek to end the era of mass incarceration,4 reforming pretrial administration has emerged as a critical way to slow down the flow of people into the criminal justice system. This primer on bail reform seeks to guide policymakers and advocates in identifying reforms and tailoring those reforms to their jurisdiction. In this introductory section, it outlines the basic legal architecture of pretrial decision-making, including constitutional principles that structure how bail may operate. Section II describes some of the critical safeguards that should be in place in jurisdictions that maintain a role for money bail. Where money bail is part of a jurisdiction’s pretrial system, it must be incorporated into a framework that seeks to minimize pretrial detention, ensures that people are not detained because they are too poor to afford a cash bond amount, allows for individualized pretrial determinations, and effectively regulates the commercial bail bond industry.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard Law School, 2016. 40p.

By the National Task Force on Fines, Fees, and Bail Practices

The purpose of this Guide is to provide state court leaders with detailed information on state bail reform efforts. This Guide presents case studies of six states’ recent experiences with bail and pretrial reform efforts: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, and Texas. These six states were selected to present a geographic and politically diverse sample, as well as a variety of approaches to reform. Key members involved in the reform efforts in each state were interviewed, including chief justices, appellate court justices, trial court judges, state court administrators, administrative offices of the courts staff, state legislators, state attorneys general, and executive-branch criminal-justice experts, among others

Fairfax, VA: The Task Force, 2020.78p.

By the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

This report examines current approaches to reforming the pre-trial and bail systems in the U.S. criminal justice system. The report reveals that between 1970 and 2015, there was a 433% increase in the number of individuals who have been detained pre-trial, and pre-trial detainees represent a larger proportion of the total incarcerated population.

Washington, DC: The Commission, 2022. 281p.

By Olive Lu, Erica Bond, Preeti Chauhan and Michael Rempel

For this report, DCJ analyzed how the Original Reforms and the Amended Reforms would have impacted pretrial releases for 2019 criminal cases in New York City. The report provides findings about how pretrial outcomes, including the number and proportion of cases where bail was set, would have changed under the Original and Amended Reforms. It also provides analyses of how outcomes would have differed by borough, by charge types, and by demographics (race/ethnicity, sex, and age).

Future research from DCJ will examine the actual impacts of bail reform on release outcomes in 2020. DCJ will also examine pretrial release outcomes and how they have changed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, nationwide protests calling for policing and criminal legal system reforms, and rising rates of certain types of violent crime in New York City.

New York: The Data Collaborative for Justice (DCJ) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2022. 48p.

By Olive Lu, Erica Bond, and Preeti Chauhan,

In April 2019, New York State passed significant reforms to the laws governing bail, which the state legislature then amended in April 2020 (collectively referred to as the "2020 Bail Reforms"). The first set of reforms (“Original Reforms”),1 which went into effect on January 1, 2020, included restrictions on which charges were eligible for money bail, mandated that people be released on recognizance (ROR)2 unless more restrictive conditions are needed to assure court appearance, required that judges set at least three forms of bail, and take into account an individual's ability to pay when setting money bail. The amendments to the bail reforms (“Amended Reforms”)3 went into effect in July 2020 and moved some charges that had been made ineligible for bail under the Original Reforms into the category of charges where judges have discretion to set bail.4 In September 2019, DCJ released a research brief that examined how the Original Reforms would have impacted the number and proportion of cases resulting in pretrial release without bail had they been in effect in 2018. This report updates DCJ’s prior research brief by using 2019 case data, applying the Original and Amended Reforms, and includes additional analyses on how the reforms would have impacted different types of charges and demographic groups in 2019.

New York: The Data Collaborative for Justice (DCJ) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, ,2021. 34p.

By Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira and David A. Shirk

This is one of a series of special reports that have been published on a semi-annual basis by Justice in Mexico since 2010 on issues related to crime and violence, judicial sector reform, and human rights in Mexico. This report examines Mexico’s progress toward implementation of the country’s "new” criminal justice system, which introduces the use of oral, adversarial proceedings and other measures to improve the handling of criminal cases in terms of efficiency, transparency, and fairness to the parties involved. This report is based on several months of research and data analysis, field observation, and active participation by the authors in the process of training law professors, law students, and attorneys in preparation for implementation of the reforms. The report provides a general background on the 2008 judicial reform initiative, and examines Mexican government efforts to implement the reforms at the federal, state, and judicial district level, relying on a unique dataset and maps generated by the Justice in Mexico program based at the University of San Diego. As an additional resource, this report also contains a translation of the 2008 constitutional changes underlying the reforms. Ultimately, the authors find that there has been significant progress toward the implementation of the new criminal justice system, and offer recommendations to assist the Mexican government and international aid organizations to help Mexico sustain this progress in the years to come. This report does not represent the views or opinions of the University of San Diego or the sponsoring and supporting organizations, and the authors are solely responsible for any errors, omissions, and opinions in the report.

San Diego: Justice in Mexico, University of San Diego, 2015. 53p.