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In 2017, around 33,000 criminal defendants in New York couldn’t post bail at their initial hearing. They went straight from a courthouse to jail simply because they were poor.

States such as New Jersey, Arizona, and California have all recently adopted new rules eliminating or sharply curtailing the use of cash bail. The New York government could pass its own bill as soon as this spring. Advocates for criminal justice reform say that ending the bail system would help curb mass incarceration.

Abolishing bail, however, raises the question of whether additional measures to detain criminal defendants will be needed. In a news conference last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the criminal justice system needs not only “reform” but also “tightening up,” particularly through allowing judges to consider a defendant’s level of “dangerousness” before granting bail.

In response, a dozen advocacy groups, such as the Legal Aid Society, released a statement accusing the mayor of attempting to “derail essential reforms to New York’s bail and parole release systems and to reverse progress made toward the decarceration of New York’s jails and prisons.”