(Opinion) This past week, the University of Connecticut School of Law sponsored a Connecticut Sentencing Commission Symposium, ​“Pretrial Justice in Connecticut.” For both Connecticut and New Jersey, balancing the importance of pretrial release with the impact on public safety remains paramount. Connecticut has a unique opportunity to affect change in its pretrial detention practices. It can learn much from New Jersey’s bail reform program implemented in January 2017 after years of careful study and bipartisan negotiation. New Jersey implemented its Criminal Justice Reform (CJR) law, which eliminated cash bail for most defendants and replaced it with a risk-based pretrial assessment. This reform was designed to reduce pretrial detention, address racial and socioeconomic disparities in the justice system, and maintain public safety by ensuring that only individuals who posed a risk to the community remained in jail. This effort was championed by Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a Democratic legislature and the state judiciary with support from prosecutors, defense attorneys and the American Civil Liberties Union.The impact of CJR on pretrial detention is far-reaching. Data compiled by the New Jersey Courts and published in the Criminal Justice Reform Report demonstrates that there was a significant decline in the non-sentenced pretrial jail population since the implementation of CJR. As of June 30, 2024, the number of non-sentenced pretrial populations in jail dropped from 9,235 in 2015 to 6,766 in 2024, representing a 26.7% decrease. Overall, 80.1 percent of defendants charged on warrants were released under some form of pretrial monitoring. Of those who received a warrant, 59.1 percent were resolved or released after a first court appearance.Before the reform, nearly 12 percent of New Jersey’s county jail population, or over 1,500 individuals, were detained solely because they could not afford bail. Many of these bail amounts were as low as $2,500. Thousands of men and women have been jailed simply because they were not wealthy enough to afford bail. By Oct. 7, 2020, that number had decreased dramatically to 0.2%, and has remained consistently low. Significantly, the previously broken cash bail system allowed violent and dangerous criminals to buy their way out of prison. Prior to reform, many lives were directly impacted, crowded jails were stretched to capacity, innocent victims were at risk, and the cost to taxpayers remained unnecessarily high.In New Jersey, the rate of re-arrest remains extremely low, particularly for serious crimes. Since 2018, the re-arrest rate for individuals released pretrial on serious charges has been below 1 percent annually. In terms of court appearance rates, defendants are more likely to show up for court following New Jersey’s reforms; in 2014 there was a 92.7 percent court appearance rate, while in 2020 the rate was 97.1percent, a significant improvement.New Jersey’s reforms demonstrate that balancing public safety with fair pretrial release is not only possible but effective, providing a model for other states like Connecticut to follow.About the AuthorsJeffrey Chiesa and Christopher Porrino are former Attorneys General of New Jersey, having served as the 59th and 60th in office, respectively. Christopher Porrino is a partner at Lowenstein Sandler LLP in New York, where he chairs the firm’s Litigation Department. Jeffrey Chiesa is a member of the executive committee at Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi PC, a leading law firm based in New Jersey. Chiesa also served as the United States Senator for New Jersey in 2013.ReferencesCourt Administrative Director Give Criminal Justice Reform a ​‘B-’ Before Senate Judiciary CommitteeNew Jersey Courts: Criminal Justice Reform WebsiteEvaluating Firearm Violence After New Jersey’s Cash Bail ReformSenate Judiciary Committee Hearing; 3/7/2024Report of the Reconvened Joint Committee on Criminal Justice; 6/2023