New York City can refine the services it provides defendants to get them back to court and keep neighborhoods safe.
Over the past decade, New York City has witnessed a significant reduction in its jail population, a trend in which its Supervised Release Program has been instrumental. Supervised Release is a tested approach of community-based supervision and support that judges can assign as a condition for pretrial release, designed to assist individuals to meet their legal obligations while awaiting trial. Launched citywide in 2016, the program rollout was meticulously tracked with data on participant outcomes and program effectiveness. This data-driven approach allowed judges, attorneys and policymakers to discern trends, assess the program’s impact across different groups and refine the program to better serve everyone’s needs. During my time working at the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, I helped to develop, implement and expand the citywide Supervised Release Program from 2015 to 2022.
In its first two years, research showed that the Supervised Release Program contributed to a marked decrease of about 1,200 individuals in the average daily jail count, while crime continued to fall. The program’s success in ensuring court appearances and reducing the jail population while maintaining public safety was not solely due to the use of data; it is, at its core, an effectively designed program. However, the strategic use of data played a crucial role in the growth of Supervised Release and the trust it garnered from judges, enabling it to be fine-tuned to serve the right people and adapt to the populations being served. Achieving the long-term goal of closing Rikers Island hinges on a steadfast commitment to using data, in a transparent and cooperative way, to further refine the Supervised Release Program.
Supervised Release has become an increasingly common practice in jurisdictions nationwide, offering a more equitable approach to pretrial justice. Historically, financial conditions such as money bail have been the norm during the pretrial period, which often results in detention for those without financial means, while individuals with the ability to pay can secure their release. However, research suggests that financial conditions are not necessary to ensure court appearances for the majority of individuals. Instead, different kinds of pretrial support can serve as effective alternatives that both protect public safety and encourage the just treatment of the accused. What’s more, as cities move away from bail, Supervised Release can often lead to cost savings; housing individuals in local jails as they await their court hearings can cost upwards of $85 per day while pretrial supervision costs closer to $15-$25 per day.
Achieving the long-term goal of closing Rikers Island hinges on a steadfast commitment to using data, in a transparent and cooperative way, to further refine the Supervised Release Program.
Washington, D.C., started moving away from cash bail and toward a risk-based system that included pretrial release in 1992. Although there is no specific evaluation of the outcomes, their pretrial rearrest rates remain similar to those in other jurisdictions that use bail. In 2017 New Jersey moved away from the reliance on money bail and expanded its pretrial release program, an initiative that demonstrated stable court appearance and pretrial rearrest rates. Similar outcomes in other parts of the country have further validated the approach of shifting from money bail and detention to a system of community-based support in maintaining the integrity of the judicial process while respecting individual rights.
The Supervised Release Program in New York City is distinct from most other programs across the nation in its integration of community resources, pairing defendants with social workers and peer mentors from nonprofit organizations. This model leverages the unique expertise and experiences of individuals who have navigated the justice system themselves, offering support that can resonate on a more personal level, fostering a sense of shared understanding and trust. These staff members can provide empathetic guidance and mentorship, bridging gaps in the system with insights that only firsthand experience can supply. This innovative approach has garnered attention and accolades, including recognition as a finalist for the Innovations in American Government Award by the Harvard Ash Center. The program’s design is a clear indicator of what can be achieved when community knowledge and resources are harnessed to support individuals within the justice system.
The development and implementation of the Supervised Release Program that I oversaw in 2015 and 2016 relied on people, including judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and others coming together as a committee to establish a framework that everyone could support. This joint effort was built on a foundation of shared responsibility for the outcomes and a mutual commitment to data transparency. A regular data feedback loop was established, allowing partners to monitor outcomes and engage in discussions about the program’s effectiveness and areas for improvement. The committee met quarterly to look at the outcomes of arraignment hearings — who was released to supervised release, who had bail set and who was released without conditions.
Then, critically, the group would look at how the participants in the Supervised Release Program were doing, scrutinizing the results by the different types of populations it was serving; an example can be seen in this scorecard, which shows an analysis of court appearance and rearrest rates by supervision level. And that was just one of the ways the city analyzed outcomes for different populations; others included risk levels, age groups, original charge, etc. The committee reviewed rearrest rates, court appearance rates and the factors associated with why people missed court appearances or program appointments, such as lack of transportation, lack of child care, or oversight. The collective approach to monitoring the program and wider system data was crucial in instilling confidence among judges and attorneys, bolstering the program’s credibility and therefore fostering its expansion. Aside from the trust this approach can garner, it also helps to arm judges and attorneys with data on how their decisions are playing out so they can course-correct as necessary.
Judges and attorneys in arraignment hearings are often not the same practitioners who follow cases after arraignment, so it’s easy to lose track of the outcomes of the decisions made in those initial hearings. At the same time, it is not uncommon for individual stories of crimes committed by someone in the justice system that make the news to disproportionately influence public perception; judges and attorneys are not immune to those pressures. Sharing data on the aggregate outcome of arraignment decisions and the subsequent successes and failures of pretrial release can provide a more accurate reflection of reality and enable confidence in the program to hinge on actual outcomes rather than overblown fears.
To allow the program to serve the populations it can effectively serve outside of jail, it is essential to not lose sight of the strategies that made its growth successful. Data from the New York City Criminal Justice Agency (CJA) reveals that although the majority released pretrial succeed, there is a small subset that gets rearrested during this phase. There’s strong potential for Supervised Release to safely serve these more challenging cases with success, but it will be important to bring all justice partners along for the exploration.
Sharing data on the aggregate outcome of arraignment decisions and the subsequent successes and failures of pretrial release can provide a more accurate reflection of reality and enable confidence in the program to hinge on actual outcomes rather than overblown fears.
New York City Supervised Release’s initial foray, in 2018, into addressing the needs of a higher-risk youth demographic than was previously eligible for the program underscored the importance of collective learning. By making use of our established routine of reviewing and discussing data with all program partners, we gained valuable insights into this pilot program’s efficacy and areas for improvement and could make adjustments in real time. Both operators and partners must have a clear understanding of which participants thrive within the program and which do not, enabling the development of tailored strategies to more effectively support those who struggle.
Strategies like those employed in programs such as Chicago’s Choose to Change and the READI programs are examples of how Supervised Release could grow to better serve those who are currently being re-arrested. Research on these two programs shows that it is possible to engage higher-risk clients voluntarily with clinical interventions and retain them in supportive services that can reduce the likelihood that they will be re-arrested. During the pretrial phase, intensive court-mandated programming is legally inappropriate, but as the two programs mentioned above show us, voluntary engagement is possible with the group of people being re-arrested more often in the current program. Supervised Release peers and clinicians can use relentless outreach techniques modeled by these programs and voluntarily engage higher-risk clients with clinical interventions, like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) appropriate for their needs. By adopting this approach, data from Chicago indicates that a jurisdiction can enhance its capacity to reach and positively impact the lives of those who might otherwise continue to cycle through the jail system.
Fostering a culture where data is not only available but actively engaged with by all stakeholders is crucial. By sitting around the same table, reviewing the same data and collectively taking responsibility for the outcomes of the justice system, a deeper sense of accountability and efficacy can be achieved.
It is through a commitment to a shared, data-driven vision that supervised release programs will continue to grow, adapt and serve as a model for how we can keep people out of jail before trial while preserving public safety, reducing costs and limiting the collateral costs to people’s lives.