Date of Award
Winter 12-1-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department/Program
Criminal Justice
Language
English
First Advisor or Mentor
Candace McCoy
Second Reader
Valerie West
Abstract
This study investigates the impact of New York’s 2020 Bail Reforms on racial and ethnic disparities in pretrial outcomes for New York State. 2019, 2020, and 2021 arraignment data from the Office of Court Administration Pretrial Release Datasets are used to determine whether racial and ethnic disparities for White Non Hispanic, Black Non Hispanic, Hispanic, and other race defendants narrowed after the implementation of the new law. The results from descriptive analysis, binary logistic regressions, and ANOVA tests suggest that racial-ethnic disparities have not abated, even though the proportion of defendants required to pay cash bail has sharply declined among all racial and ethnic groups. Black defendants were most disadvantaged in the likelihood of bail being set post reform, while both Latino and Black defendants had significantly higher mean bail amounts compared to White defendants. This study concludes that although reforms did not rectify racial and ethnic disparities in any meaningful way, reducing the number of people subject to money bail still benefited people of color overall.
Recommended Citation
Laaninen, Esther, "Pretrial Consequences: The Impact of New York State Bail Reforms on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Pretrial Outcomes" (2022). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/jj_etds/261