New Jersey

Sets bail first

Superior Court judge or designated municipal court judge

Who that is

A judge

Release on a schedule

No

Time to see a judge

48 hours

Money bail

Limited (2017)

Risk assessment

Public Safety Assessment (statewide)

Prosecutor

County prosecutor, one per county, appointed

Public defense

Statewide public defender

Jails run by

Mixed

Who decides release first

A judge makes the first release decision. A person arrested on a complaint-warrant goes to the county jail, and a Superior Court judge or a municipal judge designated by the Chief Justice decides release at a centralized first appearance. People charged on a complaint-summons are released by police with no conditions.

NJ Courts, Criminal Division Overview (R. 3:4-1, 3:4-2)

Time to see a judge

A person held on a complaint-warrant must have a first appearance before a judge within 48 hours of being committed to the county jail.

N.J. Ct. R. 3:4-2(a)(1), as described in NJ Courts, Criminal Division Overview

Money bail

Since January 1, 2017, New Jersey's Criminal Justice Reform Act has made release without money the default. A prosecutor may instead ask a judge to hold a person without bail after a detention hearing.

N.J.S.A. 2A:162-15 and following, as described in NJ Courts, Criminal Division OverviewN.J. Ct. R. 3:26-2 amendments, 2024

Population covered

97%

of New Jersey's people lived under an agency that reported to the FBI in 2025.

Agencies on NIBRS

70%

408 of 579 agencies send incident detail. The rest send summary counts or nothing.

Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer, pulled 2026-09-26.

Program

New Jersey State Police, Uniform Crime Reporting Unit

Incident reporting

Yes, NJSP built a state NIBRS UCR repository in 2019 and began state certification.

Annual report

Uniform Crime Report, State of New JerseyLatest edition: 2024. Editions online 1990 to 2024. 2017 is listed as a crime trend PDF (20180504_crimetrend_2017.pdf) instead of the full report.

Online portal

No state portal found.

What changed

The full PDF report ended with 2018; from 2019 the annual release is an Excel workbook (2024 is titled Agency Groups Offense Summary Report). The site moved from nj.gov/njsp to njsp.njoag.gov. NJ also posts bias incident and domestic violence reports.

Links and years checked 2026-09-26.

• NJSP Uniform Crime Reporting - Current Crime DataState · NJ

  New Jersey State Police · Incidents, Arrests, Hate crime · html, pdf · annual

  State UCR/NIBRS repository; preliminary current data plus Crime in New Jersey, bias and domestic violence reports.

• New Jersey Courts court management statisticsState · NJ

  New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts · Courts · pdf, dashboard · monthly

  County (21): post-indictment criminal added, resolved, pending, backlog; municipal by county. Court years 2004-05 to 2025-26. 403 to scripts; Wayback copies work.

• New Jersey Criminal Justice Reform StatisticsState · NJ

  New Jersey Courts · Bail, Courts · pdf · irregular

  County tables of initial release decisions (ROR, PML1-PML3+), detention motions, warrants; monthly in past years, now semiannual, through June 2026. No judge.

Plus 83 national sources, from the FBI, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Census Bureau, the courts, and others.