Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed an overhaul of New Hampshire’s bail policies into law Tuesday, the culmination of a swift legislative effort by new Republican majorities to undo a series of bipartisan reforms that raised the legal standard for keeping people in jail pretrial.
The new law, which goes into effect in 180 days, gives judges more discretion to detain defendants pretrial and lengthens the timeline for an initial bail hearing from 24 hours to 36 hours, except for weekends and holidays. Under the previous system, critics said it became too easy to release people accused of crimes, sometimes within hours of their arrest.
“The broken bail law was a failed social experiment that created a revolving door for violent criminals in our state,” Ayotte said in a statement. “Today, we slammed that revolving door shut.”
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Judges, magistrates and bail commissioners have always been able to detain people deemed a threat to themselves or others, or those who are viewed as a flight risk. But the legal standard was raised in 2018, under a bipartisan law signed by then-Gov. Chris Sununu, meaning more people were allowed to walk out of jail following an arrest. That standard is now lowered.
The new law does preserve a requirement that judges consider a person’s financial situation in determining cash bail. That policy was central to the 2018 law, which was part of a wave of policies nationwide aimed at ending the incarceration of people pre-trial simply because they couldn’t afford to make bail.
Since the 2018 law went into effect, lawmakers have repeatedly modified the rules in an attempt to address concerns raised by some law enforcement and mayors about people committing crimes while out on bail.
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The latest reforms were opposed by some Democrats, who point out that FBI crime statistics continue to show a decline in overall property and violent crimes in the state.
Ayotte made enacting bail reform a central tenet of her campaign, and spoke about the issue during her inaugural address. The measure cleared the House and, more recently, the Senate, where Republicans hold comfortable majorities.
