bail reform

A joint legislative hearing on crime data revealed gaps in the state's methods of collecting information that make it harder to determine whether recent laws like bail reform are working as intended.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, facing political pressure to hold a special session, on Thursday defended her opposition to make more changes to the state’s bail reform laws.

It’s been a week since GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin thwarted a potential attacker while at a campaign event near Rochester.

Partnership for the Public Good Policy Advancement Director Tanvier Peart says rollbacks to bail reform in the new budget "a stab in the front and the back."

Gov. Kathy Hochul, as a part of a conceptual budget deal, announced several changes to bail reform, discovery reform and raise the age on Thursday.

“It’s as close as you can get to an agreement without the bills being printed,” Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mike Gianaris said. “We are moving on from those issues onto the rest of the budget.”

In an analysis of the 10 most-populous jurisdictions in New York, most departments in charge of pretrial services aren't increasing funding, even though thousands more people are now awaiting trial from home. Officials in Erie County said they cut other parts of their budgets to meet the demands of bail reform.

During Tuesday night's press conference following a a car chase and shootout, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia spoke on the need to roll back bail reforms put into law in 2020. But criminal justice advocates say the reforms are working as they were intended.

Bail reform is still highly contentious in New York. Republicans, and even some top Democrats, now want to pass rollbacks due to the recent rise in violent crime. But should they? What actually happened these last two years?

Criminal justice reform advocates from across the state are gathering in Albany to put pressure on legislators and Gov. Kathy Hochul to halt any proposed rollbacks of progressive criminal justice reforms laws put in place in 2019.