Public Safety Assessment replaces money bail across New Jersey

New Jersey replaced money bail with the Public Safety Assessment in 2017. MDRC found that detention after the detention hearing fell to 7.3% of indictable defendants, from a predicted 21.9%.

  • 3 for a person

    A defendant released at the first appearance avoids weeks and months in jail while presumed innocent, which the acting administrative director of the courts calls a life-changing consequence avoided.

  • 2 for society

    Statewide, detention after the detention hearing fell to 7.3% of people charged with indictable offenses against a predicted 21.9%, and the jail population kept falling through 2019.

Depth runs from 1, a small gain, to 5, a life saved.

Status
Realized benefit.
Evidence

foundstudiedreportedclaimed

Only parties to the benefit support it.

Size

0.26 =3+4+3+320×3+110

Scale3The deepest rating above
Reach4129,387 defendants were eligible under the reform from January 2017 through 2019, and the courts ordered only 191 bails among them. Source
Duration3The Judiciary says that release spares low-risk defendants the weeks and months of detention that the old bail system imposed. Source
Distribution3The Judiciary reports fewer jailed defendants of all races than under bail, though Black defendants were still 55 percent of the jail population in 2019. Source
Probability3Realized.
Frequency1A defendant is assessed once per prosecution, at arrest and again at the first court appearance for those booked into jail. Source
Compared with

Pre-reform trends projected forward in MDRC's interrupted time series. Measured.

Without the system
21.9% of people charged with indictable offenses predicted not released or detained after the detention hearing
With it
7.3% observed in 2017
The system’s part
Not isolated. MDRC measured the whole reform, which bundled the tool with the near end of money bail, speedy trial limits and pretrial monitoring, so the tool's own part is not isolated. The sources describe the tool as nine criminal history factors that produce two risk scores and do not show how the scores were derived from data.
Learns from data

Not shown. The sources describe nine criminal history factors and two risk scores and do not say how the scores were derived.

“The PSA uses nine factors from an individual's criminal history to produce two risk scores: one representing the likelihood of a new crime being committed, and another representing the likelihood of a failure to appear for future court hearings.” Source

Later
Persisted. The Judiciary's 2019 report says that the jail population fell a further 6.4% from 2018 to 2019 while court appearance and new charge rates stayed about the same as under bail.

Download data Cite Suggest a correction

Type of benefit
Reduced Risk
System
Public Safety Assessment (PSA) with New Jersey's decision-making framework
Made by
Arnold Ventures (Laura and John Arnold Foundation) with a team of experts
Used by
New Jersey Judiciary (Administrative Office of the Courts) and New Jersey law enforcement
Where
New Jersey, United States
Date
Kind
Aggregate result
Broad benefit
Liberty protection (criminal justice)
Collections
Claims under scrutiny

Sources

  1. Evaluation report, by a commissioned evaluator.

    Anderson C, Redcross C, Valentine E, with Miratrix L (2019). Evaluation of Pretrial Justice System Reforms That Use the Public Safety Assessment: Effects of New Jersey's Criminal Justice Reform. MDRC Center for Criminal Justice Research, November 2019.

    A larger proportion of defendants were released without conditions, and rates of initial booking into jail were lower than predicted given pre-CJR trends.

  2. Report, by the organization that used it.

    New Jersey Courts (2020). Criminal Justice Reform: Report to the Governor and the Legislature, Jan. 1 - Dec. 31 2019. Submitted by Glenn A. Grant, Acting Administrative Director of the Courts.

    Since January 1, 2017, of 129,387 total eligible defendants, the court ordered a total of 191 bails.

  3. Press release, by a commissioned evaluator.

    MDRC (2019). Study Finds New Jersey's Pretrial Reform Shows Early Signs of Wide-Reaching, Positive Impacts on Criminal Justice System. Press release, November 2019.

    which showed a 43.9 percent reduction in the pretrial jail population from January 2015 to January 2018 with no uptick in pretrial crime rates and continued high court appearance rates.

Details

AI system

Workflow

The state nearly eliminated money bail and set speedy trial limits in the same reform, so judges had the tool and a framework for release conditions. Police and courts scored the tool from criminal history data at arrest and at the first appearance.

Follow-up

Conditions for replication

The decision framework must turn scores into release recommendations that judges follow. Pretrial monitoring must keep court appearance and new arrest rates steady, which the Judiciary reports that it did.

The entry

Sector

Criminal justice (pretrial release).

Purpose

Arnold Ventures built the Public Safety Assessment to tell judges a defendant's likelihood of missing court or being charged with a new crime, so that release decisions rest on assessed risk.

Cite this benefit

Peter H. Vartanian. (2026). Public Safety Assessment replaces money bail across New Jersey (AIBD-1223). Artificial Intelligence Benefits Database. https://petervartanian.xyz/aibd/records/AIBD-1223.html (archived at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/AADSII)

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