This New York Times letter to the editor by The Bail Project’s National Director of Policy Erin George counters an opinion piece criticizing New York’s 2019 and 2020 criminal justice reforms. George argues that changes to cash bail eligibility, parole, and pretrial detention have actually strengthened due process and safely reduced incarceration, citing research that shows stable court outcomes and no negative impact on recidivism.
Read the letter below and on The New York Times website.
To the Editor:
Re “New York’s Court System Is All Too Fragile,” by Nicole Gelinas (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 2):
New York’s criminal justice reforms, designed to strengthen due process and prevent people from being unnecessarily incarcerated, are performing incredibly well.
Researchers at John Jay College and in Comptroller Brad Lander’s office found that these reforms led to a net reduction in recidivism in New York City, while dramatically improving the pretrial system. That made it far less likely for tragedies and injustices as epitomized by the story of Kalief Browder, who died by suicide after spending three years at Rikers Island, to occur.
By building her argument around two tragic but rare cases that are outliers, Ms. Gelinas advances proposals that ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of people released pretrial resolve their cases without a new arrest.
She also discounts how her proposals would exacerbate the harms of unnecessary pretrial incarceration, which include job loss, housing insecurity, family separation, physical and sexual victimization in jail, and a worsening of symptoms related to mental illness and addiction — all of which are destabilizing and drive the revolving cycle of crime.
Legally innocent people should not be condemned to the mismanaged, nightmarish Rikers Island before they are convicted, except in the rarest of circumstances. We must ask ourselves if Ms. Gelinas’s proposal for more incarceration is worth the cost to the city, its justice system and our values.
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