New Hampshire Rolls Back Bail Reform
When New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) signed HB 592 into law on March 25, 2025, she also goosed the state’s incarceration rate by giving back pretrial detention power to state judges and reducing the leniency and flexibility that had been provided to those arrested for suspected crimes by an overhaul of the state’s bail laws in 2018.
Ayotte framed the bill reforming bail reform as a necessary public safety measure, eliminating “a revolving door that is putting our law enforcement in danger, that is putting average citizens… in danger.” But was that really true?
State lawmakers adopted the 2018 reforms to reduce the number of people held in jail to await trial simply because they were too poor to afford bail. Such wealth-based incarceration has the pernicious effect of piling on punishments for poverty, since loss of freedom often results in lost employment and then lost housing—even lost custody of children.
But opponents of the 2018 measure claimed it led to the release of those who then re-offended. The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called foul on that, noting that the law allowed police and prosecutors to make a case for jailing pretrial detainees—something that they failed to do in any of the cases of re-offense offered as justification for changing the law.
Data from the state Department of Public Safety also showed that crime had fallen in the years since bail reform was enacted, including a 40% drop in violent crime—from 2,625 to 1,568—between 2017 and 2024. Nevertheless, the reform passed the state Senate with only a single abstention and zero “no” votes, making Democrats complicit in the Republican-led effort.
In a nutshell, the new law lowered the standard for post-arraignment detention from “clear and convincing evidence” that a person would re-offend to “probable cause.” The law also tightened bail rules and lowered standards for bail revocation.
Ayotte advertised support for the measure from mayors around the state, plus sheriffs in all 10 of its counties. The new law scrapped provisions of a 2022 compromise bill that established a system under which magistrates—attorneys specially trained by the judiciary—could grant bail when judges weren’t available. Now every criminal defendant must appear for arraignment before a judge—though the state was given 50% more time for that, expanding the window from 24 to 36 hours.
Source: New Hampshire Bulletin