Bail Reform
NO. 1
Back in late December, NYC’s Bail’s Reform had plenty of opportunities to free poor defendants, and be able to help wrongfully convicted people, as was its intention--but as of right now, eliminating cash bail is sure to put too many violent criminals back on the streets, threatening public safety. According to the NY Times, CNBC, and the New York Post, the new laws seem to be doing the opposite of helping people; instead, they are hurting the communities where these crimes are happening. From the NY Times, it goes into defining what the bail reform is: ‘’New York is now the only state in the nation that requires judges to entirely disregard the threat to public safety posed by accused persons in determining whether to hold them pending trial or to impose conditions for their release. In addition, the new law constrains judges from holding repeat offenders with long records of both crime and absconding trial. It eliminates cash bail and the possibility of detention for a wide array of offenses, including weapons possession, trafficking of fentanyl and other drugs, many hate-crime assaults, the promotion of child prostitution, serial arson, and certain burglaries and robberies.’’
NO. 2
It also floods police departments and attorney’s with intensive forms of paperwork, leading to important evidence being suppressed and ‘solid cases can be dismissed on the grounds of incomplete discovery’; So it seems that the bail reform is leading to all kinds of damages. CNBC is saying that critics of the bail reform were absolutely wrong after three weeks after the law went into effect, as some of the repeat offenders have been arrested for anti-Semetic assault and harassment, just as New York is seeing a disturbing spike in these hate crimes. ‘’In case you need to be convinced how big a political issue this could become, remember that violent crime stories are visceral in many ways. They often involve life and death, and can be easily painted in terms of “good guys” and “bad guys” with very little gray areas in between. Crime stories also have a rare ability to energize otherwise non-politically active Americans. Ask anyone who lived through the urban crime waves of the late 1960s through the 1980s to confirm that.’’
NO. 3
The New York Post has a similar agreement, explaining the increase of anti-Semetic attacks happening and the suspects quickly being released, like the case of Tiffany Harris, which was reported on December 28, 2019, attacked three Orthodox women in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. She was hauled in handcuffs before a Brooklyn judge on menacing, harassment, and attempted assault charges, but this wasn’t the first time, as she had an open harassment and assault case back in November 2018. So, I agree that this new law will take us into a new era of ‘fear mongering’ that poses against public safety, which is a major problem. I live in New York and want the laws to be immediately changed to prove that there is a better way of fixing the criminal justice system. I understand Governor Cuomo’s reasoning, as he doesn’t want innocent people to be unlawfully held in prison. Still, the consequences of releasing those who are a danger to the community are too grave and too high to mistake.
