Hochul's Proposed Bail Changes Condemned By Advocates

NEW YORK CITY — A last-minute about-face by Gov. Kathy Hochul on the state's controversial bail reforms drew fire from advocates who warned changes will only lead to more young Black and Latinx New Yorkers being imprisoned.

Hochul this week unveiled a plan to make more crimes bail eligible — a proposal first reported by the New York Post that walks back some recent reforms that make it harder to keep people behind bars while they await trial.

The proposal is also a reversal of Hochul's previous position to leave bail reforms in place, even as critics such as Mayor Eric Adams argued that they hamstrung efforts in New York City to bring down a spike in violent crime. He argued that "dangerousness" should be a factor in judges deciding whether to impose bail on a defendant.

Adams hailed Hochul's public safety plan.

“The governor’s proposal includes significant steps, which I have advocated for, that would make New York safer, while not undoing important reforms," he said in a statement.

But criminal justice advocates, who have long argued that bail reforms have nothing to do with violent crime in the city, strongly argued against the plan.

A rollback of parts of a "Raise the Age" law — which stopped young offenders from being charged as an adult until they're 18 — drew particular ire. Hochul's plan calls for a targeted change that allows judges to charge teens as an adult if they possess of gun.

But the Raise the Age Coalition argued that doing so won't make New Yorkers safer. They noted gun violence was higher in the 1990s when all 16- and 17-year-olds were prosecuted as adults.

"When a 16- or 17-year-old is arrested with a gun in New York, the goal should be to stop that young person from carrying guns in the future – not to punish him or her as an adult," the coalition argued in a statement.

The Legal Aid Society was even more blunt.

“Governor Hochul’s plan to rollback New York’s historic Raise The Age statute will only lead to the caging of more young Black and Latinx New Yorkers while failing to address root causes, which in many cases are directly tied to poverty and a lack of robust services," the group said in a statement.

Legal Aid advocates also cried foul over the timing of Hochul's proposal — which calls for the changes to be made with the state's upcoming budget in two weeks.

"It’s both disappointing and cynical that Governor Hochul, employing the tactics of her predecessor, would unveil this proposal with the budget due in just two weeks, exploiting her advantageous position in the budget making process to strongarm legislators to buy into these regressive rollbacks," Legal Aid advocates said in a statement.