‘Supervised release’ programs struggling to keep up

The cases analyzed included non-violent felony and misdemeanor charges of burglary, robbery, larceny and other property offenses. In about a third of the rearrests, a judge also had issued a bench warrant for a failure to appear for a court appearance — a rate substantially higher than in all other types of alleged crimes. (The sole intent of bail, according to state law, is to ensure a defendant returns to court.)

In 90 percent of these cases, the rearrested person had either an open or prior offense, according to state data. 

New York City’s supervised release program, funded by the city and previously found by researchers to be successful, has in recent years shown spottier success. The program — funded by an annual budget of roughly $116 million — now serves a far larger population of people who, before changes to the state’s bail laws approved in 2019, would have been sent to jail but whose cases are no longer eligible for bail based on their alleged offense. This boom in the number of people funneled into the program as jail populations have declined has created new challenges: Caseloads have more than doubled from three years ago.

Outside the city, where pretrial release programming is often run on shoestring budgets by probation departments, the state has provided little top-down guidance and limited financial resources to counties to accommodate the changes to the state law. Judges in those regions tend to rely more heavily on setting bail on those who in New York City would be released under supervision, data shows.

Law enforcement officials and critics of the state’s retooled bail statutes say the situation has contributed to a “revolving-door” crime surge. And those released under supervision by a judge generally have a criminal history, which statistically makes them more likely to commit new crimes. It’s worth noting, however, that most rearrests occur among people released on their own recognizance, and the majority of those rearrests are for misdemeanors.

The overall effects on supervised release has been higher rates of rearrest in New York City, higher rates of pretrial incarceration upstate and across-the-board challenges to scale up a program that was intended to do much of the heavy lifting required by the 2019 bail law changes — despite almost no state funding allocated to support it. 

A similar breakdown has been diagnosed in the state’s Raise the Age statute, which was intended to ensure young offenders are not unfairly punished as if they were adults. There as well, programming services needed to rehabilitate and reintegrate young offenders into their communities were not implemented.

In response to the high rates of rearrest, Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Democrat-led Legislature earlier this year made amendments to the bail laws that gave judges more discretion to set bail or hold someone in custody. But even with those changes, the number of defendants under supervised release programming is expected to remain high. 

Aubrey Fox, executive director of New York City’s Criminal Justice Agency, said supervised release has been a “cost-effective alternative for thousands of people” given that “pretrial detention is unnecessary and unfair in most cases.” The CJA runs the city’s programming in Queens, where it was launched as a pilot program in 2009, and also maintains data that researchers and analysts use to understand criminal justice trends. 

“There is a subset of cases where the model isn’t currently working as well as it could,” Fox said. “We need to take a hard look at the data and adapt the model. But we’ve done it before, and I know we can do it again.”

Upstate’s lack of services

Recently in Albany, a man was charged with stealing shirts from a Macy’s department store. Since the charge was nonviolent, he was released from custody. He was soon arrested for the same offense. Following his second release under supervision, he was caught by a security guard trying to steal more shirts. This time, the confrontation turned physical. 

Albany County Assistant District Attorney Joseph P. Brucato said the judge initially considered the legally required “least restrictive” means to ensure the defendant’s return to court and released him under supervision. The confrontation with the guard resulted in a bail-eligible charge, and bail was set. 

Supervised release in Albany County, according to Brucato, largely consists of the probation department attempting to do check-ins with people awaiting trial. The program can include phone calls or text check-ins, and sometimes face-to-face meetings. With the lack of resources, the system relies heavily on electronic monitoring bracelets, which state law says should be seldom used. 

“They struggle to keep up with it,” Brucato said, due to an “influx of people under the supervision of probation and not enough people to really supervise them properly.” 

In a lot of cases, Brucato said, drug and alcohol use are component of the alleged criminal activity.

Previously, people may have been arrested for a low-level crime that was related to their addiction and then receive some type of taxpayer-funded treatment at the Albany County jail, Sheriff Craig Apple said. 

“We could see the changes when you give a guy addiction counseling who hasn’t had it in 15 years and has been coming in and out” of jail, Apple said. 

But given the current lack of state funds to support supervised release and the parallel need to provide addiction or mental health services to those outside the criminal justice system, people being monitored before trial by probation workers upstate are left without much support, the sheriff said. 

“When you throw everything out there and throwing it on probation, they can’t keep up with it,” Apple said.

Apple and Brucato says the state should fund the programs outside New York City at a level commensurate to the ramped-up role they’re playing.

“It would have to certainly help,” Brucato said. “I couldn’t imagine it would not.” 

But the current state budget allocated just $25 million for pretrial services this year — less than a quarter of what New York City intends to spend. State officials were unable to provide data on whether any of that first-time money has been allocated yet. 

NYC programming faces challenges 

Frank Barretto says people come into the Queens CJA’s supervised release program with at least one of three issues: addiction, undiagnosed or untreated mental illness, or housing instability. The “crimes of poverty,” as some refer to it, can lead to a cycle of struggle. 

Barretto, who manages the CJA’s peer services program, said that when a judge agrees to release someone under supervision in New York City, they are directed to a specific program.

“It’s really about not just looking at the charges and the circumstances at face value, but trying to gain an understanding of the circumstances that led them to our program in the first place,” Barretto said. 

The process goes beyond check-ins by phone or text. It features in-person meetings geared toward matching up the person with resources. A program provider might help the person on release find a job, housing or health care. Sometimes people come into the office voluntarily for a meal, or looking for a sliver of financial help to purchase a dress shirt and tie for a job interview. 

The program’s staff communicates with the judge about the individual’s level of compliance. A successful journey through the program could lead to lowering the severity of charges or a sentence following conviction.

The primary goals remain the same: ensuring the person returns for their court date and avoids recidivism. A bench warrant for failure to appear is a failure; a rearrest is worse.

The CJA rolled out additional, more intensive peer services last year to target those who are rearrested and returned to their program. Fox said program managers are keenly aware of what the data is showing about recidivism involving petty crimes, and hope to be able to address it. 

Before the revisions to the state’s bail law, the program only handled those charged with certain types of crimes while other, high-risk cases were likely to have bail set; more people went to jail instead of into the CJA’s monitoring. 

The program’s current screening process tracks whether an alleged offense is bail-eligible, which can determine the tiered level of supervised release services the person would receive.

An initial review of the state data suggests those with bail-eligible offenses who are released under supervision in New York City have lower rearrest rates, despite more severe initial alleged crimes, than those on non-bail-eligible offenses. Researchers were unsure if that outcome was directly related to the intensity of support the individuals received in the program. 

The Vera Institute, which analyzes the state’s bail laws and maintains a tracker on the city’s jail population, supports expanded pretrial service programs. Jullian Harris-Calvin, director of the Greater Justice New York program for Vera, said it could help people with a lack of physical and social services that can an increased likelihood of involvement with the criminal justice system. 

“We hope that as our leaders in New York City and Albany continue to have a conversation around bail reform, they spend more time on sound policy solutions, like investing in statewide pretrial services as opposed to political sound bites,” Harris-Calvin said.