The Legal Aid Society is urging Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and members of the Legislature to continue to reject Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed regressive rollbacks to New York’s successful bail reform law.

“Lawmakers have always maintained that data would drive the conversation on bail reform, and the data continue to confirm that the law has only furthered public safety across New York State,” reads a statement from Legal Aid. “Governor Kathy Hochul’s hijacking of the budget process to force through rollbacks is not based on merit, but is merely a desperate political attempt to beef up her ‘tough on crime’ bona fides with portions of the electorate.”

“Eliminating the ‘least restrictive’ standard and returning our state to an era where more Black and Latinx New Yorkers are jailed en masse pretrial is a scenario that the Legislature must continue to outright reject,” the statement continues. “The Chicken-Little narrative on bail reform peddled by politicians and tabloids is not the reality, and lawmakers must adhere to their pledge to focus on the data, not sensationalized rhetoric unrooted in facts.”