At this writing, it’s not clear how the stalemate on bail reform tying up passage of New York State’s budget will end. But my recent research leads me to make two predictions about public safety and the budget.

First, Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed rollback of cash bail reform would do little to prevent street crime, while putting more pre-trial detainees in New York City’s notoriously unsafe Rikers Island jail.

And second, the budget measure most likely to actually cut crime is increasing the state minimum wage.

We’ll get back to bail reform in a minute. First, let’s talk about genuinely fighting crime.

In the decade before the pandemic, New York City saw a dramatic decline in economic inequality. In the 2010s, the bottom 50 percent of New York City households experienced rising income for the first time in 20 years. At the same time, the richest one percent saw their share of the city’s total income dip for the first time since the 1980s. 

This was no accident.  It was largely the result of a new law that effectively doubled the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour, in stages, between 2013 and 2019. In order to pay the lowest-wage workers more, employers reduced their distribution of profits to executives and shareholders. 

As economic equality rose, crimes of all types in New York City also dropped dramatically. From 2013 to 2019, burglary and robbery fell 38 percent and 30 percent, respectively. Motor vehicle grand larceny declined 26 percent. Murders fell six percent. 

This is also not a coincidence. Numerous studies over the past 40 years find strong and consistent evidence that cities with greater economic inequality have high rates for all types of crime against people and property. That makes policies that decrease economic inequality, like minimum wage laws, effective ways to reduce crime. 

A Brennan Center for Justice study found that increasing income was one of the most effective factors – alongside decreasing alcohol consumption – that contributed to declining crime in the period 1990 to 2013, when overall crimes rates in the U.S. declined by 50 percent. It found that increases in per capita income were responsible for decreases in all types of crime of five to 10 percent in the 1990s and 2000s. Meanwhile, increased incarceration had no effect on the drop in violent crime during the entire time period; it accounted for about six percent of the decline in property crime in the 1990s, but less than one percent of the decline in property crime in the 2000s. 

New York City, like many communities in the U.S., has experienced an increase in crime since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The underlying causes are largely similar across the country: an uptick in gun sales as well as the decline in social cohesion sparked by the pandemic’s shutdowns. However, there is an additional underlying cause unique here. New York has experienced a more pronounced and longer economic impact from the pandemic, resulting in a slower recovery from pandemic-induced job losses and prolonged higher unemployment. 

Those factors threaten the important equality gains made in the decade prior to the pandemic that also facilitated a dramatic decline in crime. In 2020, the one percent’s income share rose again, as stock market and capital gains soared in the last half of the year while earnings for low-wage workers bearing the brunt of pandemic job dislocations plummeted.

The pandemic’s unique impact on economic inequality in New York is reflected in the ensuing crime trends. Public safety policy must be designed in ways that learn lessons from what’s worked in the past and that is responsive to what is happening in our society today.

The State can make a significant impact on reversing economic inequality by passing a new minimum wage law. The governor and both houses of the legislature all include minimum wage bills in their budget proposals. The legislature’s Raise the Wage Act (S.1978A / A.2204A) would be similar to the last minimum wage law, gradually raising the minimum wage to $21.25 by 2026. This would get it back to the inflation-adjusted value of the $15 minimum wage in 2019. It also improves on the previous law by indexing the minimum wage to inflation so that rising prices would no longer erode its value moving forward. 

Proponents of changing current bail laws cite the importance of judges having discretion to protect the general population from the most dangerous people. But the criminal justice system and its policies don’t just target the most violent criminals. In this country we have a glaring problem of mass incarceration which is not targeted, but which sweeps many vulnerable people into its grip. Changing the state’s bail laws would have a broad and detrimental impact on poor New Yorkers, exacerbating inequality at a time when we need action to eradicate inequality. 

Fixating on bail reform in lieu of budget proposals that would target inequality directly misses an opportunity to be pro-active on public safety.

Lauren Melodia is deputy director of economic and fiscal policies at the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. She is the author of the January 2023 report “Crime in the Time of Covid: How Economic Conditions and Policies Shape Public Safety in New York City.”

Photo by: Jason Lawrence and Tony Fisher