The lesson of NYC crime dropping is that ‘no bail’ is a terrible mistake

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch released new crime statistics indicating that, compared to last April, crime in New York City last month was down 9.5% overall.

That is very good news, and kudos are due to her and to the men and women of the NYPD.

But before we start popping the champagne corks, we have to understand that comparing statistics year over year obscures the real crime story in NYC.

You really have to compare crime in NYC pre-bail reform to crime post-bail reform.

Crime in NYC began its historic rise not last April but in 2019 when bail reform was passed, releasing thousands of career criminals onto our streets.

While murders are down 14% from April 2019 to April 2026, robberies are up 8.8%, grand larcenies are up 9.4%, felony assaults up 50% and auto theft a whopping 171%.

We are seven years into this bail-reform “experiment,” and felony index crime overall is up over 26% from what it was before the law passed.

Reform deceit

It has failed miserably, but our legislators will never admit it.

In fact, watch for them to start using these “declining” crime numbers to boost even more foolish “reforms” to our criminal-justice system, like “elder parole” and “timely parole release.”

Watch them start to claim that bail reform was a success, ignoring the hundreds more people killed and tens of thousands more victimized over the past seven years as a result of that misguided policy.

Consider this: If crime had stayed at the same 2019 rate from 2020 through 2024, instead of skyrocketing as it did, there would have been 600 fewer murders, 1,000 fewer rapes, 10,000 fewer robberies, 22,000 fewer felony assaults, 16,000 fewer burglaries, 10,000 fewer grand larcenies and 35,000 fewer car thefts in just those five years.

Almost 100,000 fewer New Yorkers would have become victims of felonies.

When bail reform was passed, city jails held 7,800 inmates.

By Jan. 1, 2020, when the law took effect, the number of inmates had fallen to 5,800, as more than 2,000 career criminals were released with little to no supervision.

It fell to about 4,000 in April 2020, as the city released even more dangerous criminals because of COVID.

Predictably, crime soared.

The only thing bringing crime down now is that the population in city jails has risen, to about 6,600.

The career, repeat offenders have managed to convince even liberal NYC judges that they should not be on the streets.

Imagine what they had to do in order to accomplish that.

Rikers problem

But now Mayor Mamdani and the City Council are insisting on reducing the population in city jails by another 2,200 inmates in order to close Rikers.

You see, the city is only building 4,400 total jail cells for a city of 8.4 million.

Only the absolute worst of the worst of the worst will be housed; all others will be released.

We know from recent history that this won’t go well for the law-abiding.

When the NYPD dismantled a car-theft ring in The Bronx recently, Tisch commented that if those arrested wind up not going to jail, all the work of the NYPD and the Bronx District Attorney’s Office will have been for nothing.

Boy, is she right.

The rest of our city’s leaders should take that warning to heart.

Jim Quinn is a retired career prosecutor in the Queens District Attorney’s Office, where he served for 42 years.