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In his annual State of the Judiciary speech in Albany, the chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, said that New York was one of only four states that do not allow judges to consider public safety when making a bail determination. Only the risk that the defendant will return to court for trial can be assessed.

"As a result, defendants may be put back on the street with insufficient regard to public safety, with possibly catastrophic consequences," the judge said. "This makes no sense and certainly does not serve the best interests of our communities and our citizens."

Conversely, Judge Lippman said the bail system was stacked against those accused of minor crimes, keeping them in jail at great personal hardship and weakening their resolve in plea negotiations. The judge called that outcome "unfair" and said it "strips our justice system of its credibility."

He was harshly critical of the outsize role he said that bail bond businesses have taken in the process. The judge said bondsmen, who essentially ensure defendants will return to court for a fee and access to collateral, had typically ignored defendants held on low bail amounts because their fees were based on a percentage.

In recent years, the use of bail bonds and pretrial release rates have fallen, he said.

"With precious little public accountability, bail bondsmen exercise enormous influence over who is released pending trial and who stays in jail," he said. "The fact is that, in many cases, bail bondsmen, not judges and not prosecutors, ultimately make the most critical decisions affecting the liberty of those accused of crimes in our criminal justice system."

The judge suggested taking "the profit motive" out of bail bonding by encouraging more involvement of nonprofit organizations, something that was enabled by state legislation that passed last year and that the judge said had been a success in the Bronx.

He also called for the expansion of supervised release programs that monitor defendants awaiting trial and provide them access to social services, like programs to help overcome drug and alcohol abuse. Increasing the use of those programs would save significant amounts of public money, he said, because pretrial detention costs an average of $19,000 per defendant nationally, whereas monitoring a defendant in the community costs less than $4,600.

"You do the math," the judge said. "There is enormous potential savings if we can figure out how to safely and responsibly keep nonviolent defendants in the community while their cases are pending."