Back in 2019, New York State enacted its disastrous “bail reform” law that would ostensibly fight racism by not locking up criminals prior to their court dates in all but the most violent offenses. The law was opposed by the police and nearly everyone living in high-crime areas. In the relatively brief time since then, the law has been “tweaked” three times already, supposedly to prevent some of the abuses we’ve seen. But the changes only made the law even more complicated. In fact, the new rules are so byzantine that judges in the state had to undergo training sessions to understand how to apply them. And making the situation even more farcical, after the training all of the judges were given “cheat sheets” to keep with them in the courtroom and help them figure out what they could or could not do. (New York Post)

New York’s controversial bail reform law is so arcane that state judges recently underwent a two-part training program on it — and also received an eight-page “cheat sheet” to use in court, The Post has learned.

The sessions – which lasted a total of nearly four hours — were part of mandatory, three-day seminars for all 1,300 judges that took place in June and July at the state Judicial Institute on the campus of Pace University in White Plains, sources said.

They were sparked by recent tweaks to the controversial, 2019 law that Gov. Kathy Hochul claims gave judges “broad discretion” to set bail for potentially dangerous defendants, but which Mayor Eric Adams and others have criticized as falling far short of what’s actually needed.

One court official who has seen the cheat sheets and the new guide for judges described the bail reform law as being “not very well thought out.” They went on to suggest that the law may have been “purposefully meant to be a pretzel instead of being very clear and straightforward.”

The cheat sheets include seven pages of charts and 25 footnotes. The rules say that bail is not intended to estimate the potential risk of putting someone back on the streets, but only to ensure that they return to court for their trial. Following one of the recent revisions, however, the “footnotes” include language about considering whether the defendant has a history of using guns, has violated protection orders or has “caused serious harm.” (Whatever that means.)

How ridiculous is this? Laws are supposed to be written so that the citizens who are compelled to obey them can understand them. But in the case of New York bail reform, even the judges can’t all figure them out. No judge should require a “cheat sheet” to dispense justice evenly and consistently. The concept of bail to handle criminal defendants isn’t new nor should it be controversial. It’s named right in the Eighth Amendment, where the founders only insisted that bail not be “excessive.”

There is no reason to restrict cash bail to only the most violent crimes. If you get pinched for shoplifting some relatively low-value products and it’s your first offense, I have no problem with cutting you loose with a warning until your trial date. But if you’ve been emptying the shelves of Walgreens on a regular basis, maybe it’s time for you to cool your heels in jail for a while and let the managers restock the shelves for the paying customers.

This situation is clearly feeding into the problems New York City is having in recruiting and retaining police officers. As more than one departing officer has noted in their resignation letters, it’s pretty disheartening to make an arrest, bring the suspect in for a hearing, and have them “beat you back to the neighborhood.” Perhaps it’s time for New York’s state government to stop “tinkering” with this bail reform idea and just scrap the law entirely.