'Felony arrest' data shouldn't determine criminal justice policy

[Nevilledog]

https://www.cityandstateny.com/opinion/2023/05/opinion-felony-arrest-data-shouldnt-determine-criminal-justice-policy/386862/

In a world that followed facts and reason, not politics and fear, all policymakers – Democrat and Republican alike – would be standing proudly behind bail reform. In New York, as well as Houston and Los Angeles, years of evidence prove unequivocally that bail reform has worked. Along with other modest, reasoned steps to limit the number of people incarcerated pretrial, bail reform has spared hundreds of thousands of people charged with the lowest-level crimes (most misdemeanors and some non-violent felonies) from jail and saved hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, all while reducing the likelihood of rearrest.

If our policymakers truly cared about health and safety, they would be discussing how to expand policies like bail reform. Instead, over the last few months in New York, “bail reform” once again dominated discourse for all the worst, most misleading reasons. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul held the state budget hostage for weeks in order to try to pressure state Democrats into expanding the already vast power of judges to set unaffordable bail in cases that bail reform doesn’t even touch: all “violent” felonies, a large number of non-violent felonies, and an increasing number of misdemeanors as well. Despite having supermajorities in both the state Senate and Assembly, Democrats unfortunately caved, ignoring facts as well as political wisdom to limit bail reform for the third time in less than four years.

The idea that New York judges needed more power to set bail was, of course, a farce.

Judges already routinely abuse their broad power to set bail. Some judges set bail in nearly 8 out of 10 eligible cases. The result of this already-broad judicial power: nearly 6,000 people suffering on Rikers Island. Over 90 percent of them are Black or brown, and the vast majority are jailed pretrial on unaffordable bail.

In order to win her case to needlessly enhance pretrial incarceration for Black, brown and poor New Yorkers, Hochul aligned herself with the GOP against her own party to scare New Yorkers with terms like “felony arrests” and “serious crimes.”

*snip*