‘Reform’ & Arjun Tyler

Exactly as legislators intended, New York’s new no-bail law led to Arjun Tyler’s release from jail in December — just weeks before he was arrested for allegedly trying to rape a woman in a Brooklyn subway bathroom.

Are reformers really going to keep insisting the “reform” doesn’t endanger the public? This sure looks like a crime that didn’t have to happen.

Yes, the new law allows for him to be held on $75,000 bail now. But he was already in jail pending trial on a Brooklyn burglary charge (and another separate case) until the system started releases in advance of the changes that officially kicked in Jan. 1.

In fact, he’d been in jail for more than a year — which points to a real problem that the reformers only pretended to address.

That is: It shouldn’t take remotely that long to go to trial, but the criminal-justice system is too overwhelmed to move along more rapidly. And that’s even with prosecutors settling the vast majority of cases with plea bargains.

Yet the new law actually imposed new burdens on the system, by rewriting the rules for pretrial discovery so that prosecutors and police must do far more work before anyone can even offer a plea deal.

Real criminal-justice reform might have allowed for more no-bail releases but given judges discretion to weigh public safety before freeing a suspect. And it would’ve allowed for more prosecutors, judges and, yes, public defenders to speed everything up. (Legislators could crack down on jurists who take afternoons and Fridays off, too.)

Instead, the progressives who run the Legislature rammed through their “reforms” without talking to anyone in law enforcement — and Gov. Cuomo went along.

Defendants such as Arjun Tyler are entitled to their day in court and speedy justice. But the system needs to guard the public’s right to safety, too.