Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday reiterated her determination to further roll back parts of the 2019 state bail reforms by giving judges more discretion in setting bail for those charged with “serious crimes” and eliminating the so-called “least restrictive standard” judges must consider in determining whether to hold a defendant pretrial.
Following an Albany news conference where Hochul highlighted public safety proposals from her State of the State address, she repeated what’s become one of her main talking points to reporters: she supports the fundamental idea of bail reform — making sure low-level offenders don’t sit in jail pretrial simply because they couldn’t afford bail — but thinks the 2019 reforms went too far.
