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Is There a Nexus between Bail Reform and Violent Crime?

Feb 09 2025
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Various media reports show that gun homicides, mass shootings, and gun violence all decreased in 2024 as compared to 2023. In fact, gun violence decreased in most of the nation’s largest cities. But in campaign debates and political ads in virtually every state and federal election last year, voters were told that gun violence and other violent crimes had skyrocketed. It was all a cheap political scam to drive alaw-and-orderagenda.

Many of the law-and-order advocates, and the conservative political groups supporting them, often tied bail reform to increased violence, particularly in cases involving undocumented or racial minority perpetrators.

But is there a legitimate nexus between cash bail reform and violence?

The fact that these two issues are linked to the nation’s misleadingrising violent crime problemspeaks volumes about the core systemic racism in American justice.

Violent crime has historically been associated with people of color, especially black men, while non-violent crime has been associated with white people, wealthy white men. It is through the prism of these misconceptions—that black is violent, white is non-violent—that bail reform and violence are viewed by conservative lawmakers, like those in the Texas legislature.

Let’s examine the issue of bail reform.

The disparities in American justice between wealth and poverty, either in the criminal or civil arena, have always been markedly different.

Justice tends to favor the wealthy and powerful. Some argue that this is a natural and legitimate byproduct of capitalism. This social premise is rooted in the mindset that those who strive for and achieve wealth and power should have greater legal protections and enjoy more justice benefits than those who perpetually live in an economic arena that is impoverished. In effect, wealth is measured as success, while poverty is measured by failure.

This reality has created a perpetual clash between these two economic classes of people throughout American history—a clash that has wrought injustice upon injustice on people of color since the 1789 ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The end result is a system of justice shaped more by privilege and wealth than by due process and equality, just as the framers of the Constitution envisioned.

This reality can be seen by a cursory examination of the first two steps into the nation’s criminal justice system: arrest and bail.

A June 2020 ABC News report, based on an analysis of 2018 FBI data, revealed that in 800 jurisdictions across the country, black Americans are 5 times more likely to be arrested than white Americans. In 250 of those jurisdictions, the rate of arrest for black Americans is actually 10 times higher than for white people.

Similarly, a 2018 report in The Quarterly Journal of Economics of the Harvard Kennedy School found that racial bias plays a prominent role in judicial decisions about who will and who will not be released on bail. The study revealed that bail judgesare racially biased against black defendants.”

A May 2019 report for The Council of State Governments called for an end tocash bailin favor of arisk assessmentbail system. The report opened with the observation thatbail, in its most ideal form, serves two purposes. First, it maintains the American ideal of innocent until proven guilty by allowing suspects to continue their daily lives as normally as possible while they await further court actions. Second, it incentivizes the accused to attend future hearings or face financial consequences.”

Pretrial detention populations in American jails are disproportionately black and Hispanic. Two factors contribute to this reality: race and wealth. These two irrefutable factors inevitably create inequities in a cash bail system.

Mass shootings, gun violence in social venues, gang violence, and drive-by shootings have all been linked to thebail reformmovement during the pandemic years. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Bloomberg Law reported in February 2022 that bail reform is not responsible for therise in violent crime.The report cited a criminal justice professor at the prestigious John Jay College named Candace McCoy, who has found that the factual data does not support a nexus between the two.

In a more recent September 2024 report, The Bail Project found that violent crime actually declined in the first two years after New Jersey became one of the nearly a dozen states to implement cash bail reforms.

Yet New York City police unions and Republican lawmakers in the state’s capital vehemently disagree with that general assessment. They directly link the city’s rising violent crime rate to a new state law that prohibits judges from jailing people accused of committing misdemeanors or non-violent felonies while they await trial.

However, a March 2024 report by the Brennan Center For Justice shows that New York’s 2019 bail reform law has produced positive results with very little, if any, impact on violent crime rates.

Likewise, the earlier Bloomberg report pointed out that criminologists who have examined bail reform and violence say there is no correlation between the two. They point to the fact that since New York’s bail reform law took effect in January 2020, just 2% of those released under the law, including some charged with violent offenses, have committed a crime of violence while awaiting trial under bail release.

Nonetheless, news reports like a July 2021 CNN report that cited Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and FBI Director Christopher Wray, link the rise in violent crime during the COVID pandemic tobail reform.

But again, the facts undercut thislaw-and-ordernarrative.

 The CNN report cited a study from the Major Cities Chiefs Association that showed that of the nation’s 66 largest cities, 63 showed an increase in violent crime of some sort.

Even accepting that data as accurate does not diminish the fact that violent crime has not increased in those states and cities that have implemented bail reform.

Numbers do not lie; people do.

The Prison Policy Initiative in 2020 reviewed 13 jurisdictions where bail reform measures had been implemented. The review found thatall but one of these jurisdictions saw decreases or negligible increases in crime after implementing reforms.”

Law-and-order politicians and law enforcement groups are clearly using bail reform to promote the flawed political agenda that violent crime is prevalent across the country. This strategy has long been used to gin up fear, usually of a black and brown boogeyman, to gain political support and turn out voters who fearcrime.”

Violent crime indeed increased during the two-year pandemic period, but its significant decline in 2023 and 2024 shows that there is no nexus betweenbail reformand violent crime.

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