Bail Reform Efforts Driving Houston Crime Surge, DA Report Finds

Recent bail reform efforts in Houston that allow more suspects accused of low-level crimes to get out of jail without posting a cash bond have resulted in increased recidivism and more violent crime, a new Harris County District Attorney’s Office analysis found.

In addition, the 64-page report released last Thursday, found that even though bail reform in Harris County has been formally limited to misdemeanors since 2017, felony defendants have also been given reduced bonds or released from jail on their personal recognizance.

The report, released by District Attorney Kim Ogg, a Democrat, reaches starkly different conclusions than similar reports released over the last year by the Harris County Justice Administration Department and an independent group of social scientists assigned to monitor bail reform efforts in Houston. Those organizations found that reoffending rates for misdemeanors have not increased since bail reform was implemented, and that there is no evidence that increases in violent crime can be linked to bail reform.

In a letter to Harris County commissioners and to a county judge, Ogg wrote that those earlier reports “conflict with the daily experiences of prosecutors, police, and crime victims.” Her office used the same data to conduct its own analysis of bail reform’s impact on crime and safety.

“While bail reform has indeed increased pretrial release, there is much evidence that community safety has declined while defendants released on personal recognizance have increasingly failed to appear in court,” the DA’s report said. “Contrary to the sanguine picture of the effects of bail reform in Harris County, bail reform is associated with more crime, higher criminal recidivism rates, and more bond failures.”

The DA’s report found that recidivism rates increased slightly after bail reform. But “because there are so many more misdemeanor defendants out on bond, these few percentage point increases in recidivism rate mean that the actual number of recidivists have doubled after bail reform,” according to the report. For example, the number of defendants who reoffended within 365 days increased from 3,438 in 2015 to 6,692 in 2019, a 95 percent increase, the report said. The analysis also found that recidivists are re-offending faster after bail reform.

While bail reform has increased the prevalence of pretrial release and the overall number of suspects out on personal recognizance bonds (unsecured bonds that don’t require defendants to pay or deposit money for release), there has been a corresponding 50 percent increase in the overall bond failure rate, the report found.

The analysis also found that violent crime in the community has increased since February 2019, when local leaders implemented a rule granting personal bonds for most misdemeanors. After bail reform, homicides began climbing to a new normal of about 26 per month, according to the report. Monthly weapon offenses and property crimes also have increased.

In her letter, Ogg wrote that “’bail reform,’ as presently practiced in some Harris County courts, will continue to be a driving factor in the crime crisis gripping our community.”

The DA’s report alleges that the independent monitor’s reports on the bail reform efforts have “have included thousands of irrelevant cases” – cases where bond wasn’t applicable – including cases where no defendant was charged with a crime, where a defendant was never apprehended, and where the defendant was already in jail.

“Including these defendants severely undermines the monitor report because jailed defendants have a low recidivism rate,” the DA’s report says. “The fact that thousands of jailed defendants did not re-offend does not support the argument for bail reform.”

The most recent report by the monitoring group was released Friday. It confirmed its previous reports that found “repeat offending by misdemeanor arrestees has remained largely stable in recent years.” That report did not address the DA’s analysis, since it was not received in time for the group to review.

However, in an interview with National Review, Brandon Garrett, the Duke University law professor leading oversight for the independent monitoring group, said that because the DA’s analysis is so narrowly focused on the subset of misdemeanor arrestees released on bond, it fails to look at the repeat offenders who didn’t bond out before bail reform went into effect. Before bail reform, he said, most people arrested on low-level misdemeanor charges didn’t bond out, but were released from jail often by just pleading guilty. By not including those people in their analysis, the DA’s report doesn’t include a full before-and-after comparison, Garrett said.

“They’re missing the biggest piece of the public safety problem before bail reform,” Garrett said.

The DA’s analysis also found that the impact of bail reform, while formally limited to misdemeanor cases, bled over to felony cases, and that “felony defendants have also experienced the same outcomes of lower bond amounts and greater use of personal bonds.” The analysis found that there were only 35 felony cases with bail set at $100 or less in 2017, but there were over 2,080 in 2020. In that same period, personal recognizance bonds rose from 3,969 felony cases to 15,756. The independent monitoring group is not analyzing felony cases.

Andy Kahan, director of victim services and advocacy at Houston Crime Stoppers, called the DA’s report “damning,” and said it validates his organization’s concerns, particularly around felony bail. “We had no issues with misdemeanor bail reform. More power to them. We couldn’t care less, frankly, about it,” Kahan told National Review.

Kahan said his concerns are over felony defendants released on bond – either cash bond or personal recognizance bond – who are then charged with additional crimes, and released over and over again on a new bond. He said some felony district court judges have basically applied the misdemeanor court mandates to felony cases.

Over the last few years there have been at least 134 murder victims in Harris County killed by defendants who were out on either multiple felony bonds, felony personal recognizance bonds or bond forfeiture (i.e. they we’re fugitives), said Kahan, who maintains a list.

“We have no issues with any defendant getting a felony bond,” Kahan said. “Where we draw the line is what we’re seeing in Harris County is defendants who are charged with additional crimes while already on a felony bond who … continue to be released time and time again.”

In an email to National Review, the Harris County Justice Administration Department declined to comment on the DA’s report because it was only notified about it on Thursday. “We look forward to collaborating with our colleague and reviewing this report,” the email said.

In 2017, a federal judge overturned Harris County’s bail system, deeming it unconstitutional. The county’s policy, he wrote, “is to detain indigent misdemeanor defendants before trial, violating equal protection rights against wealth-based discrimination and violating due process protections against pretrial detention.”

Late last month, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 6, a bail reform measure that prohibits defendants charged with violent offenses or charged while already released on bail from being released on a personal recognizance bond. Texas governor Greg Abbott, in a prepared statement, said the legislation “will reform our broken bail system in Texas and keep our communities safe.”