The fallout from New Jersey all but eliminating cash bail in 2017 continues to transition from speculation to hard numbers, as state officials last week released statistics demonstrating that the percentage of those released without posting bail who skipped their hearings or committed another offense remained virtually unchanged.

For some advocates, Tuesday's report on the effects of criminal justice reform in the state shows that New Jersey is a model that other jurisdictions should follow.

According to Alexander Shalom, senior supervising attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, the statistics demonstrate that New Jersey is virtually just as safe with the near elimination of bail as when the system was in place, with the added bonus that increasing numbers of those who are presumed innocent can now await their trials while continuing to be together with their families and working or studying.

"The bail industry had been predicting that ... crime would run rampant on the streets and no one would show up in court," Shalom said. "I think their prediction has been thoroughly refuted by this data."

Meant to secure the individuals' appearance at subsequent legal proceedings, bail has long been viewed by criminal justice reformers as a legal mechanism that unjustly punishes the poor and rewards those with deeper pockets. Meanwhile, the bail industry has long countered that getting rid of bail would lead criminal defendants to skip their hearings and commit new crimes.

Advocates contend the new numbers from the state judiciary don't bear out those fears.

The average appearance rate for hearings was 92.7 percent in 2014 and 89.4 percent in 2017, while the percentage of those who were released and subsequently were charged with an indictable crime was 12.7 percent in 2014 and 13.7 percent in 2017, according to Tuesday's report.

Overall, New Jersey's jail population plummeted from more than 14,000 inmates on one day in October 2012 to more than 8,000 inmates on the same day in 2018, the report found.

Jeff Clayton, executive director of the American Bail Coalition, said that while he does not dispute the validity of the statistics, he believes that a major contributing factor for the plummeting jail population is not bail reform, but a law enforcement decision to issue significantly more summonses — which simply list a date to appear in court — than arrest warrants.

The percentage of all defendants who were issued a summons increased from 54 percent in 2014 to 71 percent in 2017, according to the report. Overall, the total number of summons issued increased from 69,469 in 2014 to 98,473 in 2017, a 41.8 percent increase, the report said.

"New Jersey did not need a constitutional amendment to achieve this," said Clayton, referring to a process that in 2014 led voters to approve an overhaul of the system.

Other states considering whether to implement bail reform or that are debating how extensively to roll back the practice can now look to New Jersey as a model that works, said Roseanne Scotti, New Jersey state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit organization that advocated for eliminating bail in the state.

When bail reform kicked in as part of the New Jersey Criminal Justice Reform Act, reform advocates were concerned that some judges would be reluctant to change their longstanding practices, Scotti said.

While several counties appear to have higher incarceration rates than others in the months since the initiative commenced, demonstrating some of the work that remains to be done, Scotti said the judiciary's report makes it clear that bail reform has worked.

"It was what we expected," Scotti said. "Particularly when you have a process like what you have here in New Jersey, most people do come back to court, most people do not commit new offenses."

To determine how restrictive the release conditions should be, courts now use a system that examines defendants' criminal histories and other factors to issue them a rating of 1 to 6, with 1 representing the lowest risk and 6 the greatest, according to the report. Those with higher ratings are typically issued higher release restrictions, such as more frequent check-ins, electronic monitoring or detention.

The state judiciary trumpeted the effectiveness of the evaluation system, noting that of defendants released before their trials, 9.7 percent of those with a 1 rating were charged with new indictable crimes or disorderly persons offenses, compared to 61.6 percent of those with a 6 rating, according to the report.

Overall, of 44,383 defendants deemed to be eligible for release without bail in 2018, courts ordered only 102 individuals to post bail, according to the report. Of those 102 defendants, 90 were ordered to post bail after they violated their pretrial release conditions, such as not appearing at a required court event, according to the report.

"New Jersey's criminal justice system has begun to remove inequities created by the heavy reliance on monetary bail," Chief Justice Stuart Rabner said in a statement.

But while groups like the ACLU cheered much of the data, the report also indicated that racial disparities among the state's prison population remain.

The jail population broken down by race remained virtually unchanged, with blacks representing 54 percent in both 2012 and 2018 and whites representing 28 and 30 percent, respectively, according to the report.

Moving forward, the ACLU plans to seek additional data related to the changes and advocate for ways to reduce the racial disparities that continue in the jail population, Shalom said.

"We need to simply not maintain the status quo, but eliminate the racial disparities that plague our system," he said.

--Editing by Pamela Wilkinson.

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