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An Empirical Evaluation of the Impact of New York's Bail Reform on Crime Using Synthetic Controls

Angela Zhou, Andrew Koo, Nathan Kallus, Rene Ropac, Richard Peterson, Stephen Koppel, Tiffany Bergin

arXiv 16 Nov 2021 · Statistics — Applications · 2 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2111.08664 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

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.

Citation extraction

96
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146
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appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 56% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Abadie, A., Diamond, A., and Hainmueller, J (2010) Synthetic control methods for comparative case studies: Estimating the effect of California’s tobacco control program1.00054100%
2Abadie, A., Diamond, A., and Hainmueller, J (2011) Synth: An r package for synthetic control methods in comparative case studies0.8947571%
3Rempel, M. and Rodriguez, K (2019) Bail reform in new york: Legislative provisions and implications for New York City0.69351100%
4Barker, V (2010) Explaining the great American crime decline: A review of Blumstein and Wallman, Goldberger and Rosenfeld, and Zimring0.5114225%
5Doudchenko, N. and Imbens, G. W (2016) Balancing, regression, difference-in-differences and synthetic control methods: A synthesis0.5113233%
6Schleimer, J. P., McCort, C. D., Pear, V. A., Shev, A., Tomsich, E.,… (2021) Firearm purchasing and firearm violence in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic0.5113233%
7Arthur, R. and Asher, J (2021) What drove the historically large murder spike in 2020?0.5112250%
8Abadie, A., Diamond, A., and Hainmueller, J (2015) Comparative politics and the synthetic control method0.5112250%
9Badger, E. and Bui, Q (2020) The pandemic has hindered many of the best ideas for reducing violence0.5112250%
10Cassell, P. G. and Fowles, R (2020) Does bail reform increase crime? An empirical assessment of the public safety implications of bail reform in Cook County, Illinois0.5112250%

Showing the top 10 of 96 scored citations.