From [HERE] When Mayor Eric Adams released a wide-ranging plan to tackle crime in New York City, one formidable obstacle became clear: He would need cooperation from all levels of government to attack the root causes of gun violence.

While the mayor oversees the Police Department and city agencies that will implement many of his proposals, some of the most significant portions of his plan hinge on his ability to win over forces outside his control — and signs of resistance are already emerging.

In Albany, Mr. Adams dived into one of the most searing debates in the State Capitol: He asked lawmakers to revise the state’s recently reformed bail law, which has divided Democrats and has been used by Republicans to stoke fears of rising crime.

The mayor called on judges to tackle a growing backlog of gun cases and urged Congress to implement universal background checks and ban assault weapons, legislation that remains in limbo because of Republican opposition.

He also asked district attorneys to prioritize gun-related cases — a vague directive that left some officials unsure if the mayor was aware of what their offices were already doing.

The response so far has been lukewarm, especially from Democratic legislative leaders in the Capitol. They passionately defended the 2019 legislation that seriously restricted the crimes for which judges could set bail. Though judges can still set bail for certain felonies, they are compelled to set it at the lowest level necessary to ensure defendants return to court.

But the Democratic leaders still appeared open to a dialogue.

“Can we stop blaming bail reform when the sun comes up?” Carl E. Heastie, the Assembly speaker, said last month. “Please stop just trying to make political fodder because we think it’ll make for good campaigns.” But he later allowed that “there’s a lot of discussions that have to happen.”

Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the majority leader in the State Senate, said on Tuesday that she was open to broad conversations about criminal justice. “We are concerned, as everyone is, about a spike in crime,” she said. “But there is no connection between our bail reform and the national spike in crime.”

The mayor quickly signaled he would be unafraid to use his bully pulpit to pressure lawmakers. Days after releasing his crime plan, he issued a forceful statement calling on lawmakers to give judges more discretion in sentencing after the release of a teenager whose bullet grazed a policeman’s leg in a scuffle. Although the teenager posted bail, Mr. Adams raised a different issue: whether judges should be free to deny bail to defendants they thought were dangerous and keep them in jail.

Mr. Adams’s stance has placed state Democratic leaders in a conundrum, especially in an election year.

On the one hand, the legislative leaders want to be courteous to the recently elected mayor, whose profile continues to rise. But they are also wary of lending credence to Republican attacks that the bail law Democrats passed is flawed or helped fuel crime, an assertion that is not supported by any reliable data

In late December, two years after the law took effect, the state began to publish data that documented the rates at which defendants were rearrested. In the year after reforms were fully implemented, the available data appears to show that roughly 20 percent of those released after being charged with crimes ineligible for bail were rearrested before trial. About 2 percent were rearrested for violent crimes.

The data is incomplete and limited, making it impossible to draw a complete picture, however, and some researchers say that it could be years before the full impact of the bail law can be properly assessed.

Even so, some Democrats say the preliminary results vindicate bail reform, pointing to the low rate of recidivism in violent crimes and citing the positive effects of allowing those facing trial to remain in their jobs and homes while they wait for their day in court.

Studies from other localities where similar reforms have been introduced have found that such laws do not “lead to a meaningful increase in crime,” according to an analysis released by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Republicans, for their part, have largely argued that any preventable crime is a public policy failure. 

State Senator Zellnor Myrie, a left-leaning Democrat, said that it was “important that we acknowledge that whether or not the statistics bear it out, people feel afraid.” [MORE]