The New Hampshire House of Representatives voted Thursday on a high profile bill dealing with the state's bail system: a bail reform bill that is the latest in a string of bail reform bills in recent years.
NHPR’s Todd Bookman has been following the legislation and joined All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa to talk through what happened.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Julia: So, in simple terms, what does this latest bill that passed the House Thursday do?
Todd: It makes a couple of major changes to the process. This stems back to 2018, when the state completely overhauled the bail system. The aim then was to prevent poor people accused of low level crimes from sitting in jail, pretrial, just because they couldn't scrape together the money to make a bail payment. These reforms established essentially cashless bail for people who weren't deemed a threat to the public. And it crucially changed the legal standard the judges use for determining when someone is deemed a danger to the public or a flight risk. It essentially lowered it, and critics say that change tipped the scale too far in favor of defendants. So the bill Thursday rewrites that standard: It tightens it so that judges have more discretion to detain people pretrial.
Julia: What do the supporters of the current system say about how things are going today?
Todd: They point to crime statistics that show a steady decline in violent and property crimes in New Hampshire in recent years. It’s proof, they say, that there isn't a surge in crimes just because of this 2018 bail law.
Stepping back here, though, there is a bigger debate here about data vs. anecdotal events. Anecdotally, there have been a number of stories in the media in recent years about crimes — sometimes violent crimes — committed by people who are out on bail, essentially, that there's this revolving door here. And one thing that also came up on the House floor Thursday is a reminder that just last year, a bipartisan bill was passed that tried to address some of these same concerns, and that law only went into effect three months ago, and that those reforms should have more time to play out. That was the point that Rep. Buzz Scherr from Portsmouth made to colleagues.
Scherr: “Bail reform, as this Legislature has continued to work on it, is working. We do not need to throw it out.”
Todd: Throwing out essentially six plus years of work on this, he's arguing.
Julia: Law enforcement, mayors, even Gov. Kelly Ayotte – they've all pointed to cases of defendants committing crimes while out on bail on other charges as evidence for making these changes. Ayotte held a press conference Wednesday, in fact, pushing for this bill, where she highlighted a number of violent crimes committed by people out on bail. How did all of that land in the house Thursday?
Todd: Well, there was a flurry of floor amendments put forward, but at the end of the day, the bill that passed was squarely in line with what Gov. Ayotte wants to see become law. It again lowers the bar for detaining people pretrial, giving judges more discretion. And after multiple years of bipartisan tweaks to the original law, there was clearly a more partisan flavor to this fight Thursday. Here's Republican Terry Roy, who leads the House Criminal Justice Committee, speaking to colleagues.
Roy: “We don't have to compromise. It is now a Republican majority, and we're going to pass a Republican bill.”
Todd: This did pass though, to be clear, it wasn't a roll call vote. So we don't know the exact partisan breakdown.
Julia: So Todd, back in 2018, the driving push for bail reform had to do with low income defendants. Lawmakers wanted to make sure that people weren't just sitting in jail because they couldn't make a $100 bail payment, for example. So is that overriding principle still in place?
Todd: Yes. If this bill becomes law as written, those same protections would remain in place. This is not a complete erasure of the 2018 bill. Judges are still supposed to consider the financial situation of someone they're going to release pretrial when setting bail. This new bill is really about what supporters say is stopping the revolving door, people getting out on bail, committing crimes, getting released again.
The bill now will head to another House committee and then if successful there, it will go on to the state Senate.
