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Have you seen the political advertisement that starts with pictures of the subway-shooting images then promises that if elected the bail reform act would be repealed so that this craziness would end... Lies, Lies and more LIES...

THE SPIRIT: The bail reform act was intended to prevent an innocent person from languishing in jail until his/her case wound through the courts simply because they were poor and couldn't afford bail... And the truth is prosecutors were using incarceration to force people to plead out their cases so they could get out of jail...

THE LETTER: Instead of a measured and reasoned approach, usually afforded when a new legislation is introduced, angry judges are freeing anyone who qualifies for release regardless of individual consideration running a revolving door for low-level offenders who've flooded the state court system with thousand and thousand of cases prosecutors will never be able to prosecute due to the sheer volume of cases.

An example would be a professional shop-lifter or "booster" who takes less than $1,000 per outing knows that they can only be arrested for a misdemeanor and such misdemeanor would be exempt from "pre-trial" detention. Once arrested they know that they will sit in arraignment processing until court at 8AM or 8PM each day and will then be released. The arraignment process includes breakfast or dinner and a ride back to town... 

A low-level professional thief can literally act with impunity knowing that they wont go to jail even the 12th time and prosecutors will never be able to prosecute all of these cases within the time limits of the speedy trial laws.

It was clearly not the intent of our legislature to have criminal's abuse the law and unleash a crime wave on the general public, and usually when a judge feels a citizen or entity is misusing or perverting a legislative intent or the purpose and "spirit" of a law, they wont allow it and they will create an well reasoned brief to support it if challenged. Instead the Judges are embracing only the letter of the law and their doing it to make the legislature look bad and sway voter sentiment and shame on them for making victims of New Yorkers and then blaming it on the legislature.

Judges could always fix the loopholes by legislating from the bench like they do so frequently. If a defendant came through arraignment the third or forth time one would think an opinioned judge would craft a decision and order explaining when he wasnt releasing John Q. Public defendant because he believes that it  wasnt the legislative intent for criminals to thrive with impunity... 

But why bother implementing the bail-reform act the way they intended for it to be implemented, when we can have so much fun making them look ridiculous... Watch us set everyone free and blame it on you!

And of course its political. It always is and its sad and disgusting and both sides of the isle do it; At all costs the other side can never win and its us against them and good people have resorted to telling and believing lies if it benefits their political tribe and now we've got judges making victims of the ones they swore to protect and framing the law-makers for a crimewave they didn't commit.