Bail Reform and Public Safety

Data from 33 cities across the country discredits the claim that bail reform causes crime to increase.

Published August 15, 2024

Criminal Justice

More than a dozen jurisdictions across the country have curtailed the use of money bail over the past decade. ¹ But after violent crime rose sharply in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, many politicians, police leaders, and pundits were quick to blame bail reform. ² Claims that bail reform undermines public safety ultimately led to a series of rollbacks. ³ In this study, we test those claims, evaluating how crime trends fared after the enactment of bail reform policies in cities across the country.

To date, researchers have evaluated bail reform largely in individual cities or states, finding little if any evidence that these policies increased crime. ⁴ This study is the first to use data from dozens of jurisdictions nationwide to test bail reform’s causal impact on crime trends. It compares major offenses from 2015 through 2021 in 22 cities that had in place some type of bail reform with 11 others that did not. The analysis first focuses on all major offenses across jurisdictions and then on specific types of crime. It also examines the impact of reforms according to whether they were implemented through legislation, court order, or changes in prosecutorial policy. Last, this study focuses on cities where research shows reforms had large effects on how and when bail was set.

Ultimately this report finds no statistically significant relationship between bail reform and crime rates. In other words, there is no reason to believe that bail reform has led to increased crime. This holds true even when focusing on major policy changes that have drawn public scrutiny, like those in New York and New Jersey. These findings add to a growing body of literature showing that bail reform is an unlikely explanation for recent trends in crime, whether increases or decreases. And they suggest that policymakers’ recent focus on weakening bail reforms as a response to crime has been misguided — and a distraction from smarter and more promising ways to enhance public safety.