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Giving Compass' Take:
• Melanie Skemer, Cindy Redcross, and Howard Bloom highlight the success of New York City’s Supervised Release Program, an alternative to bail.
• How can funders help bring productive and equitable alternatives to bail across the country? How could the bail system in your area be improved?
• Learn about myths around cash bail reform.
The City worked with the NYC Criminal Justice Agency (CJA) in 2009 to pilot the Supervised Release
Program in Queens to provide judges in the borough with an alternative to releasing defendants charged
with non-violent felonies on their own recognizance, setting bail, or remanding them. The Program released
defendants under the supervision of case managers at CJA, with whom defendants were required to check in on a regular basis to ensure they appeared in court pending the resolution of their cases. The City
expanded the Program citywide in 2016 following the success of the initial Queens pilot — along with similar
successes in additional pilots in Manhattan[1] and Brooklyn — and in consultation with national experts and
court stakeholders. The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) oversees the citywide Program
operations. Client services in each borough are provided by three non-profit organizations that specialize in
social services and alternatives to detention and incarceration. The Program initially served low- to
medium-high risk defendants charged with non-violent felonies and misdemeanors. Supervised Release
later became an option for all defendants with pending cases in the City, a change that was made following
the historic bail reform legislation implemented by New York State in January 2020.
In 2016, the City engaged MDRC to conduct an evaluation of the Program to assess program implementation citywide and measure program impact on appearance rates, arrest rates, and overall case outcomes for its clients. To answer these questions, MDRC implemented a mixed-method approach that involved the review of program documents and interviews with prosecutors, defenders, judges, defendants, and providers as well as observation of courtroom proceedings. In addition, the MDRC researchers collected and analyzed administrative and programmatic data from New York City and State agencies as well as from Supervised
Release providers. The results show that the Program:
- Substantially reduced the use of money bail and pretrial detention for those who were Program eligible
- Maintained high court appearance rates, even though those clients spent nearly twice as long in their communities pretrial as those in the comparison group
- Maintained low re-arrest rates for Program clients as compared to similar defendants
Overall, these findings suggest that the Supervised Release Program is a promising strategy for reducing the City’s use of pretrial detention, while ensuring the maintenance of public safety and attendance in court.
These findings are particularly encouraging for MOCJ, demonstrating the success of one part of the City’s strategy to improve public safety and promote fairness while reducing unnecessary arrests and incarceration. In addition to the importance of achieving these goals as a matter of fundamental fairness and decency, the City has also committed to replacing the dilapidated jails on Rikers Island with smaller, safer, and modern borough-based facilities. This plan anticipates that programs like Supervised Release and other approaches to reducing both crime and incarceration will ensure that the City continues to shrink the footprint of the criminal justice system in the lives of New Yorkers.