New Jersey’s criminal justice reform efforts are leading to fewer arrests while keeping more defendants out of jail pretrial, an independent report published Thursday found.

Officials and advocates say it’s a fairer and better system, and serves as a model for other states pushing for change.

"This evaluation of New Jersey's sweeping reforms provides some of the most rigorous evidence to date about the effects of an ambitious package of reforms, including the virtual elimination of money bail,” said Cindy Redcross, director of the MDRC Center for Criminal Justice Research, the group that completed the report. “These results offer important and promising lessons showing that the criminal justice system and its stakeholders can work together to dramatically reduce the number of people sitting in jail unnecessarily...."

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