Bail Reform in New York Essay Sample

Bail Reform in New York
Student's Name
Institutional Affiliation
Bail Reform in New York
The criminal justice system is motivated to instill changes and improvements in its ranks to match the needs of this changing society. One area that has demanded such changes is incarceration. In a nation such as the US, incarceration has been seen as a problem rather than a solution. That is because the institution has consistently failed to deliver on its mandate of reforming individuals back to useful members of the community, going by the number of people re-arrested after their release from prisons. Still, more inputs are invested in developing lasting solutions to some of the problems, including overcrowding and overutilization of national resources in the criminal justice system. Some states such as Colorado, New Jersey, and California followed the trends with critical inputs in their bail reforms. Lately, New York made a similar attempt that failed terribly. That has triggered questions on bail reforms and why they would fail in a state that is burdened by incarcerations, such as New York. This paper explores bail reform in New York, emphasizing the nature of the reforms, the failures, and the future of such reforms in New York. The analysis is vital in understanding New York's position in bail reform currently and the changes it could make in the criminal justice system to adopt a better law for the future.
Understanding Bail
The concept of "innocent till proven guilty" has proven inadequate in its quest to deliver justice to various individuals. In most legal jurisdictions, the accused persons are not guilty until evidence points to their wrongdoing and the court sets the right punishment for their offenses (Shapiro, 2019). However, bearing the backlog in courts, it takes longer for an individual to be tried and be proven guilty or not guilty. Before the determination is reached, the system can keep the defendant in pre-trial jail or release him/her to continue with his/her normal activities as the trials continue. Upon the determination of guilt, an individual can be released or jailed. The concept of jails comes to save people in pre-trial jails. As the trials continue, an individual can pay some amount in cash bail or money bail, which is the amount of money deposited in the court to ensure that the defendant does not miss the proceedings. In most cases, the defendant can resort to bail bonds if he/she cannot raise enough cash to stand the money bail. This money is taken by the court to ensure that the defendant does not disappear amidst the court proceedings (Shapiro, 2019). Still, the bail allows the defendant to continue with his/her life normally until the court's innocence. If the defendant fails to appear for the hearings, the courts are mandated to issue a warrant of arrest.
Multiple complaints have been raised on the bail system, thereby triggering the need for reforms. Critics of the bail system insist that hundreds of thousands of people have met their rights violated as they are held in jail for long (Shapiro, 2019). Mostly, such individuals are unable to raise money or bonds for the bails. On the same grounds, having bails anchored on currency favors gives the rich an open platform to commit crimes while the poor are locked without proof of innocence. The current system can dump people in jails for years or months just because they cannot raise the money. Hence, eliminating cash bails creates a level playground for the justice system to use the same law regarding individuals despite their social statuses. While such reforms would be welcome as they eliminate class wars in the criminal justice system, questions are still raised on the criteria that will be employed to choose the accused individuals who are eligible for bail.
The bail reform issue has been accompanied by two sides that are worth exploring. One side stands the argument that the bail system is flawed and stands only to benefit a specific economic class in society (Shapiro, 2019). On the same note, the system has been used to place innocent individuals behind bars, thereby rendering them into challenges, including lack of advancements in pursuance of happiness, job losses, loss of parenting rights, and disrupting their lives. On various occasions, people who are held in pre-trial jails are obliged into guilty pleas to continue with their lives. That implies a failure of a justice system that should protect every individual's rights, whether guilty or not guilty. The other faction of the argument has been rooted in finding the best replacement for the bail system. While the majority of the stakeholders in criminal justice systems agree that the bail system is discriminatory, especially against the poor, there have been challenges in finding the best replacement for such a system.
Lately, the debate has been on removing the bail system completely from the criminal justice system. Since 2014, New Jersey and Alaska have played the front position in leading the bail reforms. Both states abolished cash bails for the majority of the cases facing their citizens. These states are now focused on releasing defendants on mandatory detention or supervised releases. The courts must also conduct a comprehensive risk assessment before the release of the defendants. California has followed the trends of implementing court-determined risk assessments of the defendants before they are released. New York attempted similar changes with notable challenges experienced, leading to the faltering of the reforms.
The New York Reforms
New York is the next state that has instilled a notable effort to revitalize its bail system. On January 1, 2020, the state implemented a bill that would change the monetary bail system. The new changes would exempt non-violent felonies and misdemeanors from monetary bails. Defenders charged with such crimes would be released on their recognizance. The changes, however, included some exceptions such as bail jumping, escape charges, or sex offenses in which case the defendant would be held behind bars until their arraignment. The bill also insisted that an arraignment judge will determine a defendant's release conditions. Release or release without monetary conditions would be mandatory for various offenses. The specific offenses eligible for non-monetary releases included all misdemeanors and non-violent felonies except for certain offenses against children, terrorism-related charges, witness tampering and intimidation, and criminal contempt a domestic violence matter, and sex offenses. The bill also exempted crimes about drug charges except for charges of operating as a major drug trafficker. Burglary in the second degree committed in dwelling and robbery in the second degree when aided by another were also exempted from the monetary bail terms in New York.
The impacts of the bill would have shown significant impacts on the state's criminal justice system. It is documented that the jail system is keeping people in incarceration unnecessarily. In the US, approximately 60% of the individuals in jail are waiting for their court arraignments (Barkow, 2019). Reducing that number by at least 50% in the new bail reforms would reduce the incarceration numbers and overcrowding in prisons significantly. In New York, the impacts would have been similar. Under the new bail reforms, 43% of the 5000 people detained pending trial would have been released. In 2018, in the nearly 205,000 cases arraigned in New York, only 10% would have been eligible for monetary bail under the new bill (Barkow, 2019). Amidst the concerns of prison overcrowding and developments in the COVID-19 pandemic, the reforms would have triggered the necessary outcomes on relieving prisons of the overcrowding challenge that it keeps facing.
Eliminating the Ills
New York would have eliminated multiple ills associated with monetary bail systems if it had approved the reforms. The first challenge that New York intended to address was the wealth bias in the criminal justice system. It is commonplace that the bail system creates a platform for wealthier offenders to enjoy the system better than their poor counterparts if they are accused of the same crimes. The Bail Reform Act of 1984 allows for wealthy offenders to evade detention by paying high restrictive measures as marked by high-profile cases such as Marc Dreier and Bernie Madoff (Rempel & Rodriguez, 2020). As a poor offender waits in jail to face trial, the wealthy offender can execute his/her daily activities without disturbance. At worst, offenders who can afford the monetary bail are faced only with house arrests. By extension, allowing such inequalities to happen in the justice system implies the violation of the Equal Protection clause that demands the equal application of the law among all citizens. Allowing monetary bails implies the defilement of the law by the very individuals who should protect it.
The other challenge linked with the monetary bail system that New York intended to address was the unnecessary incarceration. The primary reason why bails have been implemented in most jurisdictions is to limit the risks associated with releasing suspected offenders. Specifically, the bails act as collateral for offenders who miss court sessions (Rempel & Rodriguez, 2020). However, this could be a misguided submission considering that only 2% or fewer offenders miss their trial upon release from incarceration. Additionally, an individual is incarcerated on pre-trial occasions pending the determination of their innocence, something that violates the justice system's position to uphold the rights of individuals regardless of their characteristics. With the removal of monetary bails, almost 60% of prisoners would be released from incarceration. That number implies the high number of unnecessary arrests that the nation has accommodated. Being a leading state in the incarceration prospects, New York intended to lead the nation in changing the trajectory of unnecessary incarceration.
There are also socioeconomic effects that bail systems have instilled, thereby instilling the need for reforms. Whether it is from pre-trial or not, poorly managed jail terms bear adverse socioeconomic impacts on defenders. While in incarceration, individuals cannot engage in constant communication with their families and...