New York Bail Reform Laws

New York Bail Laws 2020

Michael Santana

[Institutional Affiliation(s)]

Author Note

The Reforms in the Bail Laws NY

New York Bail Laws 2020

Introduction

For a considerable length of time, criminal justice advocates have been battling for a conclusion to money bail. They state the training makes two levels of the justice framework: In one, affluent individuals can bond out of prison and work out their cases upon discharge; in the other, needy individuals, regularly blamed for low-level wrongdoings, can't manage the cost of bail and have their lives overturned while anticipating trial. Toward the beginning of the new year, New York joined states like California and New Jersey in finding a way to stop this training. Criminal courts in the state are currently denied from setting money bail for most wrongdoings and peaceful lawful offenses.

Body

The question arises that why the concept of cash bail needed to be abolished in New York. This is since many criminologists have pointed out that cash bail is the source of criminalizing poverty in the US. As they are unable to pay their bail, justice automatically tilts towards the wealthy defendants that can afford bail. This is a serious issue that creates segregation in American society. This is explainable by the study of one Kalief Browder, who had to spend three years in jail as his parents could not secure a bail for him. Although the charges on him were dropped later, he would not stand the humiliation and committed suicide CITATION Jes19 \l 1033 (Jesse McKinley, 2019)

The whole purpose of these bail laws is that the defendant pays the cash to act as collateral in case he does not appear in the court. Knowing that these things can also happen to somebody else, the judges imposed the "least restrictive conditions" that assure that the defendant does appear in courts to face their trails. These conditions include restrictions on travel, and in some grave cases, electronic monitoring CITATION Rox20 \l 1033 (Asgarian, 2020).

There are critics of these laws as well. They believe that the judges will lose the distinction and give bail to all, even those who are accused of serious crimes. However, they can be assured that there is a system in place that judges the defendant on the type of felony that he had committed. The system in place makes the process of bail more difficult as the defendant commits other crimes. This makes sure that a habitual criminal cannot get bail in any case, which is not true when the system of the cash bail was in place CITATION CCI20 \l 1033 (CCI, 2020).

Conclusion

In short, we can see that the reforms in the New York bail laws can do some real good in the society if they are strictly and responsibly implemented. Many criminologists think that these laws will significantly reduce the number of people that are often jailed because they cannot pay to stay out of jail. Many have dependents that they need to take care of and jobs to maintain to feed themselves and their loved ones. However, the precise impact of any law can never be predicted ahead of time. Currently, in New York City, 43 percent of the almost 5,000 people detained pretrial would have been released under the new legislation as they would no longer be eligible for either bail or detention. (This analysis excludes people held pretrial for a parole violation or after a sentence is imposed.) The impacts outside of New York City could be even greater because many upstate jurisdictions currently have higher rates of detention with misdemeanors.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY Asgarian, R. (2020). The controversy over New York's bail reform law explained. Vox.

CCI. (2020). New York’s Bail Reform Law: Summary of Major Components. Center for Court Innovation.

Jesse McKinley, A. F.-S. (2019, December 31). Why Abolishing Bail for Some Crimes Has Law Enforcement on Edge. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://nyti.ms/36hBx04