  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.
