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City's Supervised Release Program Has Positive Impacts Without Increases in Missed Court Appearances or Rearrest Rates, Report Finds


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Mayor de Blasio makes an announcement (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


Defendants in New York City's pretrial supervised release program are no more likely to miss court than people who have bail set and are not rearrested at a higher rate, according to a city-commissioned study by MDRC's Center for Criminal Justice Research being released Thursday.

The research, contracted by the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) and the Mayor's Office of Economic Opportunity with funding from the Manhattan District Attorney, comes at a time when some city officials, including Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, have blamed a months-long spike in gun violence in large part on recent changes to the state bail law that increased reliance on alternatives to incarceration, like supervised release.

“You hear terms such as supervised release right now, that is a fallacy. There is no supervision. There is just release, and you are seeing the repercussions of that across the city,” Shea said in June.

MOCJ officials say the new findings vindicate the program. "I think being able to show that the program is just as effective as bail in ensuring return to court and also ensuring that folks are not being rearrested at a higher rate is really exciting," said Miriam Popper, the executive director of MOCJ's Office of Pretrial Justice Initiatives, by phone.

According to Popper, before supervised release, judges for the most part had two options at arraignment: they could set bail, a monetary condition for returning to court, or they could release the defendant on their own recognizance. "This evaluation has showed that adding a third option of support and supervision in the community was able to meet the goals of the New York State bail statute...just as effectively as a monetary condition," she said, "which as we know can often lead to an unequal system for those without financial resources and those with."

But while supervised release successfully diverted some candidates from having bail set without meaningfully impacting court appearances, the data shows it also led judges to assign supervision to defendants who would otherwise have been released on their own recognizance, a trend known as "net-widening" and viewed unfavorably by criminal justice reformers. The city and the nonprofit providers of supervised release programming say they are working to prevent net-widening from further ensnaring people in the criminal legal system, but defense attorneys are concerned by the findings.

Supervised release, a program first piloted in New York City in Queens in 2009 and expanded citywide in 2016, allows a defendant to remain in the community while they await trial under the condition that they follow a personalized plan of check-ins with a case manager and other service providers. Participants are often connected with services like employment training and housing support. The program has been lauded by community-based organizations as an effective and more just approach to treating those presumed innocent and ensuring defendants return to court, while also strengthening community ties.

Enrollment in supervised release increased the percentage of cases that were dismissed by roughly 10 points, while reducing the percentage of guilty rulings by 11 points, the study found. The analysis lends credence to the theory that the threat of being incarcerated with or without bail incentivizes defendants to plead guilty in order to be released.

The study also found that the program's impact did not vary across different racial, ethnic, or age groups, but "had stronger effects" on bail rulings and pretrial detention for felonies than misdemeanors, and for cases in Manhattan versus the Bronx, Brooklyn, or Queens.

Over the course of the study period from May 2017 to January 2019, defense attorneys sought supervised release for only a small portion of the roughly 287,000 defendants who were arraigned after a custodial arrest (this does not include people who received desk appearance tickets to be arraigned at a later date).

Seventy-two percent of arraignments (over 200,000) included charges that would've made the defendant eligible for supervised release, but only about one in ten of the eligible defendants were screened during the 20-month period, the study shows.

"The main explanation for this pattern is that defense attorneys opted to have their clients screened for SR only when they believed them to be at risk of having bail set, otherwise preferring to preserve their chances for being released on their own recognizance (ROR)," the report states.

When defense attorneys did offer the option of supervised release at trial, judges in 58 percent of cases assigned it. Those that weren't assigned to supervised release were just as likely to have bail set as be ROR'd -- roughly 20% each.

Despite what the report identifies as the "gatekeeper" role of defenders to prevent net-widening, MDRC's modeling found that about 44 percent of people on supervised release would have otherwise been ROR'd. About the same percentage, 45 percent, would have received bail.

Reforms passed in 2019 and 2020 eliminating bail for most non-violent felonies moved that gatekeeper role from defense attorneys to judges, who now exercise greater discretion in setting pretrial conditions, according to Popper.

"What that means now is that it requires more training on our part, a really close eye on what the outcomes are and what is happening," she told Gotham Gazette.

Aubrey Fox is the executive director of Criminal Justice Agency (CJA), the nonprofit that first piloted the supervised release program in Queens and interviews every defendant as part of an assessment to determine the likelihood they will return to court. He said CJA's recommendation following the assessment, while non-binding on judges, can help ensure the program captures the right participants because guidelines call for individuals who are not eligible for bail and get recommended for ROR to receive it.

The MDRC report's authors point out that with the relatively small number of participants during the study period, few defendants were caught in this process.

But defense attorneys say it's more serious. "Our perspective on that and what we've seen is that judges and prosecutors don't in any way recognize that there is a harm to unnecessarily placing our clients on supervised release," said Libby Fischer, the managing attorney of the criminal defense practice at the Harlem-based Neighborhood Defender Service, in an interview.

"There are entire categories of cases where the DA's office asks for supervised release even though the cases are misdemeanors, even though the clients have no record," Fischer said. "And since the judges can't see or don't see the negative consequences of putting large swaths of communities of color under court surveillance, they set supervised release when it's asked for."

"If the request had been for bail, in old times, they would've understood the negative consequences and ROR'd the client," Fischer added.

The study also found that supervised release increased the average total time before trial by about two months (from 86 to 143 days) and doubled the amount of time spent in the community from 64 to 128 days. The percent of defendants who received desk warrants (which the report considers a good proxy for missed court appearances) increased from 24 to 34 percent, a finding the study called statistically insignificant because of other factors that created uncertainty that these outcomes "aren't just the result of chance," explained Melanie Skemer, the study's lead author.

"In a lot of alternative-to-detention programs, what ends up happening is they have the so-called 'supervision effect,' which means that people fail at a higher rate because they are being watched more closely," Fox said.

"The really remarkable thing about supervised release is that -- I think mostly because of the skill of the social workers who work on the projects and the kind of ethos of the program -- the program managed to avoid that pitfall of well-intended but creating unintended consequences of penalizing people more," he said.

Popper said supervised release employs a "graduated response" model that aims to provide a "light touch" whenever possible. "If someone comes into the program who is lower risk and might have otherwise been released on their own recognizance, unless otherwise assigned by the judge, they would be put on a low level of supervision," Popper said.

"While the type of people who are put into the program is really up to the judges at this point, there is a lot we can do within the program, such as these policies, to ensure that being in supervised release does not lead to deeper entrenchment in the system," she said.

"Proportionally, the estimated increase in time at risk is far greater than the estimated increase in bench warrants,” the report states. “Hence, when accounting for the time at risk of pretrial failure and the increased number of opportunities to miss court appearances, enrollment in SR does not appear to have increased failures to appear to court appreciably, if at all."

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Max & Murphy Podcast: New York City's Choppy School Reopening


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Mayor de Blasio & Chancellor Carranza visit a school (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


September 23, 2020 - Max & Murphy Podcast: New York City's Choppy School Reopening

Reema Amin, reporter for from education-focused publication Chalkbeat New York, joined the show to discuss New York City's choppy and limited reopening of in-person school, questions around all-remote and blended learning, and much more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think -- we're on Twitter @TweetBenMax and @JarrettMurphy. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts, under "Max & Murphy," and listen to Max & Murphy live on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. on WBAI radio, 99.5FM or wbai.org.

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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

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'The City Needs a Crisis Manager': Kathryn Garcia Plots a Run for Mayor


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Kathryn Garcia (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


Earlier this month, Kathryn Garcia, a top official in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, resigned after more than six years as commissioner of the Department of Sanitation. In her time serving under the mayor, Garcia has worn many hats beyond that of keeping the city clear of trash and snow. De Blasio entrusted her with leading the city’s effort to abate lead exposure among young children, named her the interim chair and CEO of the struggling New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) for part of 2019, and then appointed her the city’s emergency “food czar” this year to ensure that hungry New Yorkers were fed during the coronavirus pandemic, all while she continued to lead the sanitation department.

In her at times terse resignation letter to the mayor, Garcia cited recent budget cuts to her department and the threat of major layoffs as the main reasons she could not continue to serve the administration. “This budget crisis is incredibly severe, but I am disappointed to see so much of the work we have done over the last six years being walked back,” she wrote. “If, as is often said, budgets are a statement of values, my values require me to resign in the face of these cuts, which will harm New Yorkers.”

But Garcia’s decision was also spurred by the fact that she is considering a run for mayor in the election set to take place next year, potentially joining a crowded field of Democrats who have declared or are exploring a bid to replace de Blasio when he is term-limited out of office. In a recent interview on the Max & Murphy podcast from Gotham Gazette and City Limits, Garcia explained her decision to step down, why she is considering a run for mayor and how she would approach the mayoralty, as well as her work covering the various responsibilities she was given by de Blasio.

If she declares, Garcia could be one of three women, all first-time candidates for elected office, who were formerly part of the de Blasio administration – Retired Army Brigadier General Loree Sutton, who was commissioner of the Department of Veteran Services, has already jumped into the race, while Maya Wiley, former Counsel to the Mayor who later headed the Civilian Complaint Review Board, is considering doing so. Besides them, Comptroller Scott Stringer and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams have already declared their campaigns, while City Council Speaker Corey Johnson continues to explore a run. Former nonprofit executive Dianne Morales left her job to run for mayor and has been actively campaigning for some time. Former top Bloomberg and Obama administration official Shaun Donovan is strongly considering jumping into the race and has been raising significant sums of money to do so. And other Democrats, like finance executive Ray McGuire are reportedly considering bids.

Garcia said her decision to explore a mayoral campaign was driven by the pandemic. “I am not sure that I would have gotten in if I didn't think the city needed a crisis manager at this point who would be really focused on core services for city residents,” she said, citing her own managerial experience in government.

Though she did not criticize the mayor by name, she drew a clear contrast in how she would handle the job of running the city. “I am incredibly good at creating very effective teams that really maximize a lot of people's talents,” she said. “There is not infighting on things that I work on. And the second thing is, I'm extremely clear about my expectations and I'm extremely clear about the fact that I expect accountability. You need to produce.”

De Blasio is known for being a micromanager and for overriding the advice of his own commissioners while relying on his own, often flawed, instincts. “I'm open to hearing other ideas. I'm not dictatorial. I do want to hear from people,” Garcia said. “I don't assume I'm necessarily the smartest person in the room on every topic. But after we have the airing of what you think might be a good way to go, we make a decision, we move on and we execute.”

As sanitation commissioner, Garcia has already led a uniformed agency and she said she’d bring the same perspective to bear over the NYPD, should she become mayor. De Blasio has, more often than not, had a soft touch with the department, often defending it against instances of egregious behavior while insisting that he is working to reform its practices. “I'm a tough but fair manager,” Garcia said, when asked how she would handle the police department. “You'll know what I expect of you and we will be ruthlessly transparent about that. I will stand up for you when I need to, but I won't if something really depraved happens.”

Since she’s an unknown political entity, the hosts -- Ben Max and Jarrett Murphy -- asked Garcia if there is a Democrat she most closely identifies with or would model. She would be an Ed Koch-like mayor, she said, describing her politics as “progressive and practical.” She would be a tough manager, she said, who constantly wants to know how she’s doing. She said it is essential that the mayor knows how city agencies are performing every day, in a data-driven way.

What all the candidates in the mayoral race have to contend with is the fallout of the pandemic. The economy has been devastated and the city faces a massive budget crunch, exacerbating the pressure to provide basic city services. Unemployment is at a high, though jobs have begun to slowly return as the city and state have reopened.

“We need to get people back employed across the city and then start to really think about building economic mobility,” Garcia said, acknowledging the challenges ahead. “And there are things that I think we can do more effectively but also in partnership with our broader commercial and business community.”

Garcia blamed the mayor for some of the many woes currently facing the city, particularly on quality of life issues. “I know that the city is confronted with a very severe fiscal crisis and I'm sure difficult choices had to be made,” she said of major budget cuts to the sanitation and parks departments. “I would just have made different choices. You cannot have the city come back to where it needs to come back to if you can't go to a park because it's dirty and...you're seeing litter baskets overflowing on street corners.”

In her responsibilities as sanitation commissioner, Garcia came face to face with the many issues that she said plague the city’s bureaucracy, whether it’s the lengthy procurement procedure (“the bane of my existence”) or the slow-moving land use process. “It just takes us too long. It takes us too long to buy anything. It takes us too long to build anything or even get approval for doing that,” she said.

“We aren't as transparent as we should be about our key performance metrics. The mayor should know at the end of the day, did we have a good day? Did we have a bad day? And that shouldn't be driven by what's in the news, necessarily. That should be driven by what are the numbers.” She also said she would “restructure, and consolidate and streamline” certain bureaucracies but would not name any particular agencies or offices.

Even tackling issues like redesigning commercial and residential waste disposal helped expose flaws in how the city handles problems. “What do we want from the public realm and how can we achieve that?” she said. “There's an enormous amount of competition for street space, parking spaces, restaurant space now, bike lanes, bus lanes, but I think if we start to reimagine it, we can achieve a lot of these varying goals. And we should also just be experimenting like crazy, rather than lots of studies. Let’s do something, try it, if it doesn't work, let's move on.”

Having served as interim chair and CEO of NYCHA, and then as vice chair of the NYCHA Board of Directors, Garcia offered specific criticisms of the city’s management of public housing. Though under de Blasio NYCHA’s operating expenses have been brought under control, the agency needs as much as $40 billion to bring all its developments to a state of good repair. The city, under current NYCHA Chair and CEO Greg Russ (and a federal monitor), has begun to implement a plan to raise those funds through a combination of programs including transferring several developments to private management under the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program and through an infill development program which would build mixed-income housing on unused NYCHA land.

Garcia said Russ’ plan has been “actually very creative” but said she wouldn’t have necessarily taken the same approach. “My feeling when I was at NYCHA was, there had been so much under-investment. So it didn't necessarily have to go in this way but there’s so much underinvestment, there's so much need, that whatever is the quickest way to get dollars that fix bathrooms and fix kitchens and make sure the heat’s working, I am supportive of.”

She said the infill program “would not be my first priority. My first priority would be to do the traditional RAD program as well as the plan that Greg Russ has come up with to use these vouchers and finance off of them. But I certainly would not turn away an opportunity that would generate money for NYCHA residents. Anything we can do to be creative, to generate money for them I think is very important.”

[Listen to the full conversation: Max & Murphy Podcast: Kathryn Garcia on Trash, Food & Possibly Running for Mayor]

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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