The Indian Panorama: City Council Holds Bail Hearing
NEW YORK CITY (TIP): The Courts & Legal Services Committee and the Fire & Criminal Justice Services Committee recently held a joint hearing, ‘Examining the New York Bail System and the Need for Reform.’ The hearing, chaired by Council Member Lancman and Council Member Elizabeth Crowley, looked at how to reform our dysfunctional bail system….
Village Voice: Here’s What the Legal Aid Community Thinks of de Blasio’s Bail Reform Plan
Criminal justice reform advocates reacted with guarded optimism to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposed bail reform package, designed to keep more low-level, nonviolent offenders out of the troubled Rikers Island jail facility. From police reform activists to the public defender community, those who work with some of the most vulnerable defendants say the program —…
The Problem with NYC’s Bail Reform
Our Executive Director, Robin Steinberg, published the following piece in The Marshall Project about the city’s proposal to reform the bail system: “Yesterday, the city unveiled a plan to largely eliminate cash bail for New Yorkers charged with low-level or nonviolent crimes. This long overdue step has the potential to reshape pretrial detention in New York City…
HuffPost Live: NYC To End Cash Bail For Low-Level Offenders
“The law is not the problem. The fact that judges routinely disregard the law and the options provided for under the law is the issue.” — Robyn Mar, Director of Early Advocacy New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to end bail for low-level offenders, allowing them to await trial under home supervision. We…
WNYC: New Bail Alternative Means Freedom for Thousands
Thousands of people accused of misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies will stay out of Rikers Island under a $17.8 million pretrial supervision program, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday. The program comes as local officials try to reduce violence at the Rikers Island jails and while they grapple with concerns the criminal justice system discriminates against…
MSNBC: A victory in bail reform for criminal justice advocates
A nationwide movement for bail reform scored a significant victory on Wednesday, as America’s largest city announced a new initiative to reduce the number of people it forces to await trial behind bars. Starting next year, New York City will spend $17.8 million to supervise an estimated 3,000 low-risk defendants, instead of requiring them to…
Vice News: NYC to Eliminate Bail for Many Non-Violent Offenders
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is set to announce an overhaul of the city’s bail system on Wednesday that is designed to keep low-level offenders out of Rikers Island. The plan, which offers 3,000 offenders supervised release in lieu of bail, will help “reduce both the financial and human costs of needless incarceration,”…
The Guardian: New York City foster care: stories from children and parents the system failed
Nearly a decade later, Angelo Clement vividly remembers the phone call that changed his life. The then 14-year-old high school freshman was home alone on a school night in his small one-bedroom apartment in midtown Manhattan, where both he and his mother lived, when a teacher called looking to speak with his mother. Clement told…
ABC News: NYC Council Members: Suicide Points to Need for Bail Reform
The death of a 22-year-old man who hanged himself after spending three years as a teen jailed without trial should spur New Yorkers to push for bail reform, City Council members said at a hearing Wednesday. City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said Kalief Browder’s death “has been a wake-up call for many in our city…
Observer: New York State’s Top Judge: Bail System ‘Totally Ass-Backwards in Every Respect’
In a country where criminal defendants are innocent until proven guilty, Kalief Browder spent three years in jail awaiting trial on charges of stealing a backpack when he was 16, because he couldn’t afford bail. The charges were eventually dismissed and Browder, who was never convicted of anything but had served a lengthy sentence, was…
Slate: The Problem with Bail
Former Bronx Defenders Trial Chief David Feige writes in Slate about the problem with the bail system and one simple way to fix it: On Sunday, John Oliver devoted the majority of his HBO show to America’s broken bail system. “Bail” is the cash or property equivalent demanded of arrestees as surety—an assurance that they…
New York Magazine: How All New Yorkers Killed Kalief Browder
In his short eulogy of Kalief Browder, The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote that the teenager’s death — he hanged himself with an air-conditioner cord in his home in the Bronx, after three years of torment by the legal system — “must necessarily be laid at the feet of the citizens of New York, because it…
City Limits: Correction Dept. Slows Bid to Restrict Rikers Visits
A move to restrict visiting rights on Rikers Island—billed by the Department of Correction as a necessary step to control violence—that faced opposition from legal rights groups went nowhere Tuesday at a meeting of jail regulators. The Board of Correction decided to hold off on the proposal pending further study. The Board is considering whether…
Newsday: NYC may set up taxpayer-paid bail fund for low-level offenses
City Council leaders want to create a $1.4 million, first-of-its-kind city-financed bail fund to spare indigent defendants charged with low-level crimes from unfair and costly stretches of confinement at Rikers Island before their day in court. But criminal justice experts are divided on how effective a reform that would be, while one of the city’s…
Gotham Gazette: Through Committee, Bill to Create Office of Civil Justice Heads Toward Law
New York City is one step closer to having a new Office of Civil Justice. On Tuesday, the City Council’s Committee on Courts and Legal Services unanimously passed a bill that would create the office, to be tasked with assessing, coordinating, and helping reform the civil legal services available to low-income New Yorkers. Among the…
City Limits: State Senator: Citywide Bail Fund Would Help, Not Hinder, Courts
A recent Daily News editorial titled “City Council: Do not pass go on bad-idea bail fund” erroneously asserted that the city-wide bail fund being considered by the City Council was unnecessary, a waste of taxpayer dollars, and would undermine the authority of judges. With all due respect to The Daily News, I could not disagree…
Al Jazeera America: New York City police rethink ‘Broken Windows’ strategy
“The type of offenses that I see everyday in the courthouse in the South Bronx are not the type of offenses that are being policed in rich, affluent, white neighborhoods.” – Justine Olderman Bronx Defenders Managing Director of the Criminal Defense Practice Justine Olderman appeared on Al Jazeera America last night to discuss the negative…
City Limits: Four Nonprofits to Receive Residual Class-Action Settlement Funds
New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, and The Bronx Defenders, all leading civil rights advocacy groups and law firms, announced that the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York has approved their request to equally distribute nearly $165,000 in remaining class-action settlement funds…
The Guardian: My friend died in a police van. That could have been me, if I were black
Bronx Defenders Social Work Intern Chun Rosenkranz published this moving op-ed in The Guardian on the real life consequences of living in a country whose criminal justice process is not color blind: My friend Hanuman was cremated two weeks ago, his ashes now sit in a wooden box on his parent’s alter. The cause of his death is…
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: ArchCity Defenders saw problems with municipal courts before Ferguson turmoil
Two years before Ferguson attracted national attention for racial tension and questionable court practices, a group of volunteer lawyers calling itself the ArchCity Defenders was already concluding that something was off about the city. Today the group is at the forefront of a legal movement to overhaul municipal courts regionally — one that has already…
City Limits: The Rap-Sheet Trap: Mistaken Arrest Records Haunt Millions
Melissa wasn’t aiming terribly high: She wanted to be a substitute teacher in New York City’s school system, a job that would combine her passion for education with a decent paycheck. Yet her modest goal had to go on hold thanks to the inability of an upstate court to verify that her almost 20-year-old shoplifting…
Capital New York: Officials: Expand legal program for immigrants
Members of the state Assembly and advocates want to expand a public defender program for immigrant New Yorkers who are facing deportation. The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) aims to decrease the rate of deportations of New Yorkers who, for the most part, have been living lawful, productive lives despite their unresolved legal…
Gotham Gazette: Bronx Program Serves as Inspiration for Mark-Viverito’s City-Wide Bail Fund Proposal
Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito used her first State of the City address to advocate major reforms to the city’s criminal justice system designed to keep low-level offenders out of jail. Along with a call to issue more tickets rather than arrest people for misdemeanors, in her speech earlier this month the speaker proposed a city-wide…
City Limits: NY’s Certificates Offer Catch-22 to People Convicted of Crimes
When John Orlando was released from prison last year, he wanted to get his life back. He’d worked for decades as a funeral director, and he wanted to keep doing that. He loved the work, he needed the money, and he wanted the dignity of paying back the money he stole. “I was guilty. I…
New York Law Journal: City Broadens Its Evaluation of Indigent Criminal Defense
New York City officials are testing a number of methods to assess the quality of indigent criminal defense, which, they say, is part of a broader attempt to make for a fairer criminal justice system. Though the city now tracks conviction rates, incarceration rates, case duration, charge reduction and disposition at arraignments, officials in Mayor…