We conduct an empirical evaluation of the impact of New York's bail reform on crime. New York State's Bail Elimination Act went into effect on January 1, 2020, eliminating money bail and pretrial detention for nearly all misdemeanor and nonviolent felony defendants. Our analysis of effects on aggregate crime rates after the reform informs the understanding of bail reform and general deterrence. We conduct a synthetic control analysis for a comparative case study of impact of bail reform. We focus on synthetic control analysis of post-intervention changes in crime for assault, theft, burglary, robbery, and drug crimes, constructing a dataset from publicly reported crime data of 27 large municipalities. Our findings, including placebo checks and other robustness checks, show that for assault, theft, and drug crimes, there is no significant impact of bail reform on crime; for burglary and robbery, we similarly have null findings but the synthetic control is also more variable so these are deemed less conclusive.

翻译：本文对纽约州保释改革对犯罪的影响进行了实证评估。纽约州《保释消除法案》于2020年1月1日生效，该法案取消了几乎所有轻罪和非暴力重罪被告的金钱保释及审前羁押制度。我们对改革后总体犯罪率变化的分析，有助于深入理解保释改革与一般威慑效应。通过综合控制分析法，我们开展了保释改革影响的比较案例研究，重点考察干预后袭击、盗窃、入室盗窃、抢劫及毒品犯罪等类型犯罪的变化情况。研究基于27个大型城市公开犯罪数据构建数据集，实证结果（包括安慰剂检验及其他稳健性检验）表明：对于袭击、盗窃和毒品犯罪，保释改革未产生显著影响；对于入室盗窃和抢劫犯罪，虽然同样未发现显著效应，但由于综合控制变量的变异性较大，这些结论的确定性相对较弱。