Alvin Bragg and Eric Gonzalez are on the ballot. How are the boroughs doing on crime and prosecutions?
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez are both up for reelection next week. Bragg is running against Republican Maud Maron and Independent Diana Florence. Gonzalez is running unopposed.
Both men, but Bragg especially, have faced criticism from critics throughout the city and even around the country for allegedly prioritizing progressive principles over urgent crime-fighting imperatives. But is that really the case? What are the Bragg and Gonzalez records in the streets and in the courts these past four years?
Data help tell the story. And as with all data, they can also mask dynamics. For example, district attorneys do not have to charge every case that the police bring to them. Their job is to assess both the strength of the evidence and the likelihood of success at trial, and this assessment can vary across boroughs depending on the evidence the police present, the nature of the jury pool and the kinds of policies that any one district attorney may have put in place to govern the use of discretion across the office.
The city and the boroughs in national perspective
Let’s look at the big picture first. New York City continues to be one of the safest cities in the United States as measured by index crimes, a term that describes the seven most serious violent and property crimes: murder, robbery, rape, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and grand larceny auto. Index crimes are the measure used by the FBI to compare crime across cities.
Using this same measurement, if Manhattan — the city’s third most populous borough, and its commercial and tourism center — were a city, it would be the 14th safest city in the nation. If Brooklyn — New York City’s most populous borough — were a city, it would be the third-safest large city in the United States.
Looking at violent crimes alone, Manhattan and Brooklyn are in the middle of the pack of the nation’s 20 biggest cities.
Measured by murder rate, Manhattan and Brooklyn are among the safest places in the United States. Manhattan’s homicide rate is just 2.6 murders per 100,000, 38% lower than a year ago, and near the historic low of 2.0 in 2018. Brooklyn suffered 3.6 murders per 100,000, 23% lower than a year ago, and the lowest rate in decades.
It’s not only homicide that’s down. The number of shootings has also gone down since 2021. Both Manhattan and Brooklyn have reached new historic lows for shootings, as has the city as a whole.
Borough trends since 2021
Those are wide-angle snapshots. What about trends since Bragg first won election and Gonzalez was reelected in 2021? There are many similarities among the boroughs, but some important differences between them as well.
Assaults are at a historically high level in New York City, registering totals not seen in two decades. Much of their increase happened right after the city hit prepandemic lows in 2019 — but the growth since 2021 has been significant as well. Manhattan’s increase over that time period has been 16.4%, which is the smallest increase among the five boroughs. Brooklyn’s increase over that period was 26.3%, the second-smallest.
While assaults are cause for serious worry, assaults involving firearms are on the decline. Since 2021, shootings in the city have dropped by 55%, with Manhattan well outpacing that reduction, showing a 68% drop. Brooklyn’s shooting rate dropped by 51% since 2021.
Justice system performance beyond crime rates
As any viewer of “Law & Order” knows, district attorneys work with the police to control crime. The area over which they have direct influence is in prosecuting offenders. They make important judgment calls about which cases to pursue and how.
Bragg was attacked for a “Day One” memo (later revised after a backlash) in which he called for greatly limiting pre-trial incarceration; suggested a shift in focus from the length of a sentence to restorative justice programs and other types of accountability; said his office would “not prosecute certain low-level misdemeanors that will not impact public safety,” including trespass, fare evasion and resisting arrest for non-criminal offenses; and instructed prosecutors not to prosecute as felonies certain types of robberies.
What is the record of Bragg’s office, and Gonzalez’s?
Arrest and declination
A case begins with an arrest. To arrest a person, a police officer must have probable cause that a crime has been committed. After arrest, the district attorney reviews the evidence to determine whether there is enough to charge — either in a complaint drawn up by the district attorney working with the arresting officer and reviewed by a judge, or, in a felony case, an indictment returned by a grand jury after the district attorney has presented evidence.
A district attorney can “decline” a case because there isn’t sufficient evidence to show probable cause that the person committed the crime (sometimes between arrest and presentation, for example, a witness may decide not to testify) or because of an assessment that the likelihood is low that a jury will convict on the higher standard of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt.
Declination rates are also affected by an office’s policies to try to make discretion uniform, as in the effort by Bragg in the Day One memo. Manhattan has the city’s second highest declination rate for both felonies and misdemeanors, after the Bronx, while Brooklyn has the second-lowest declination rate for felonies and third lowest for misdemeanors.
Manhattan has the second-highest percentage of cases declined for both felonies and misdemeanors. The percentage of misdemeanor declinations in Manhattan has skyrocketed since 2021, from 5% to 31%, a trajectory shaped by the policies set out in the Day One memo and well above the citywide average of 21%.
Brooklyn has a low felony declination rate of 6% and is in the middle of the pack for misdemeanor declinations at 13%.
Arraignment
If a district attorney decides to bring a case, either by filing a complaint or presenting the case to a grand jury, the person charged appears before a judge. This is called arraignment: The judge formally informs the defendant of the charge and sets terms of release or detention, and the defendant pleads guilty or not guilty.
Brooklyn and New York County account for approximately 56% of arraigned cases citywide. Declination rates and arraignment rates are related: as a district attorney declines more cases, fewer cases make it to the arraignment stage. This dynamic is reflected in the modest reduction of Manhattan’s share of arraignments citywide since 2021, from 26% to 23%. Brooklyn’s share modestly increased from 30% to 32%. The data also show that Brooklyn’s share of the city’s criminal justice workload has increased and Manhattan’s has decreased.
Bail, remand and re-arrest
When a defendant appears before a judge at first arraignment, part of the proceeding entails the judge setting conditions of release or detention. These included being released on recognizance (RoR) — that is, the person is released with no special conditions; supervised release, which means the person is released with some conditions related to participation in the citywide supervised release program; bail, in which the person is released upon paying a sum set by the court; or remand which means the person is detained.
RoR is the most common form of release in the city, with 67% of arraigned defendants. Manhattan RoRs 59% of defendants and Brooklyn RoRs 69%.
Both Manhattan and Brooklyn use supervised release at approximately the rate of the citywide average.
Remand is extremely rarely used — in about 1% of the cases, while judges set bail on defendants about 18% of the time in Manhattan and 11% of the time in Brooklyn, compared to a citywide average of 15%.
In 2019, the state Legislature passed a series of laws that forbade the use of bail in almost all misdemeanor cases and further restricted its use in some other cases. Since then, there have been vigorous disputes as to whether the bail reforms affected crime rates. Comparing rearrest rates over time gives some indication of whether release conditions are affecting crime. In both Manhattan and Brooklyn, as well as in the city as a whole, the percentage of people rearrested for a misdemeanor after being released on another charge has remained steady. Between 2021 and 2024, the percentage of people rearrested for a felony has declined citywide (from 22.5% to 18.2%), in Manhattan (from 22.1% to 20.5%) and in Brooklyn (from 25.3% to 22.1%).
Dismissal rates
As part of the same set of reforms passed in 2019 related to bail, additional reforms were passed related to “discovery.” Discovery refers to the obligation of prosecutors to provide a defendant with evidence material to their defense. The new law required that prosecutors produce these materials within a particular time frame: 90 days for a misdemeanor and 180 days for a felony (except murders). Failure to meet these deadlines would result in the dismissal of the case.
Dismissal can happen for many reasons and at any time during the life of a case from arraignment on. Before the passage of the discovery laws, Manhattan dismissed 41% of cases and Brooklyn 54%. Following the passage of the new discovery rules, dismissals in all boroughs rose sharply as prosecutors struggled to meet the time deadlines. 75% of cases in Brooklyn result in dismissal, as do 68% of cases in Manhattan.
Conviction rates
Conviction rates for felony and misdemeanor arrests have improved slightly in Brooklyn but have deteriorated in Manhattan. For Brooklyn, the conviction rate for felony arrests went up from 23% in 2021 to 31% in 2025. In Manhattan, the conviction rate for felony arrests decreased from 47% to 40%. In New York City, only Staten Island has a conviction rate above 50%, while the conviction rate for felonies is above 80% in the rest of the state.