A new Siena College poll released Tuesday found declining support for recent changes to New York’s bail law.
The new law, which eliminates money bail for the wide majority of misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, has come under intense scrutiny as courts have released people who would have remained in jail under the old rules. The bail reforms went into effect at the beginning of the year.
The poll found that 49 percent of respondents said the changes were bad for New York while 37 percent said they were good for the Empire State.
Those results stand in contrast to last April, when 38 percent of respondents said the law would be bad for the state, while 55 percent said it would be a positive move.
The new poll showed waning support for the bail reforms among Democrats, Republicans and Independents. About 53 percent of Democratic respondents said the law is good for New York— an 11 point drop from Democrats polled last year.
The poll involved 814 registered voters in New York and was conducted by telephone Jan. 11-16. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
Backers of the law said the old rules unfairly punished poor people who could not afford to post bail, keeping them in pretrial detention for low-level crimes.
State Democrats have faced mounting pressure since the beginning of the year to make changes to the law. Republicans, who argue the bail law jeopardizes public safety, have called for a full repeal. The law also recently received criticism from Richard P. Donoghue, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Some leading Democrats have signaled they are open to making changes to the law.
But State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said this month that he wants to let the reforms play out without changes. He urged people to be patient.
(AP)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
One Response
The new bail law has been in effect for 21 days, hardly enough time to assess its impact on crime rates, convictions and costs of the justice system. It may seem counterintuitive, but it needs to be evaluated when there is enough information to evaluate how it works.