Letters

In Carlos Sandoval’s touching story about his family’s experience with bail following his brother’s arrest [“Bail Reform: A True Story,” Vistas, Opinion, March 5], he argues in support of New York’s recent bail reform. To support his position, he makes the following misleading statement: “In jurisdiction after jurisdiction that has dropped cash bail for misdemeanors, violent crime rates have also fallen, and there’s been little if any change in recidivism or court appearances.”

Here are the facts. First, the bail reform affects not just misdemeanors but other serious crimes as well. Second, the language of every other bail reform statute in the country requires the courts to consider a presumption of pretrial release for most offenses. New York’s new bail law, however, goes a critical step further to mandate, not simply presume, pretrial release for a wide variety of offenses that constitute the majority of all arrests in New York State.

This is a small but significant change in the statutory language. Under the new law, discretion to override a presumption of release in favor of setting bail or imposing detention is eliminated in most misdemeanor, nonviolent felony, and even two common violent felony offenses. It is the one provision of the law that strikes hardest at curtailing the discretion prosecutors and judges have held in their pretrial evaluations.

Mr. Sandoval misleads again by stating: “Since the bail reform law went into effect, other than lurid headlines, there has been little to no credible evidence of a negative impact. How could there be? The law has been in effect for just 60 days.”

This is factually incorrect. According to a recent report from the New York Police Department: “In the first 58 days of 2020, 482 individuals who had already been arrested for committing a serious (felony) crime such as robbery or burglary were rearrested for committing an additional 846 crimes. Thirty-five percent, or 299, were for arrests in the seven major crime categories — murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny auto — that is nearly triple the amount of those crimes committed in the same 58 days in 2019.”

While there were certainly injustices under the old system, New York’s bail reform law has clear flaws and serious unintended consequences, which should have been acknowledged by Mr. Sandoval.

Jeffrey Close

East Hampton