City Hall expanded supervised release to create an alternative to Rikers Island and ensure defendants show up for trial. The number being rearrested far exceeds projections.
High-flight-risk criminal defendants are being rearrested on felony charges at a much higher rate than city officials projected after being freed without bail under an alternative-to-jail program, newly released state stats show.
Under criminal justice reforms that went into effect in 2020, judges can no longer impose monetary bail against defendants for a vast array of charges. As before, they also cannot factor in whether a defendant is a potential danger to the community.
But for defendants judges consider prone to blow off returning to court, supervised release allows them to be freed pending trial without putting up bail. Instead, they are monitored by social workers to ensure they return to court.
Starting with these programs’ launch in 2016, city officials have insisted that only a small number of supervised release participants were being rearrested on felony charges while on release.
A November 2019 announcement of the program’s expansion by the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) estimated that only 8% had been rearrested for felonies.
But the numbers began to slide: MOCJ listed that rate as 9% in 2018, 10% in 2019, and 13% in 2020, according to annual scorecards on the program the office later released.
But an analysis by THE CITY of data compiled by the state Office of Court Administration and the state Division of Criminal Justice Services reveals a much higher rate more recently: 28% of those freed on supervised release were re-arrested on felony charges from January 2020 through June 2021.
And the data show that participants in supervised release are re-arrested at an even higher rate when misdemeanor rearrests are factored in: 50%.
In all, one out of every two individuals placed in the supervised release program from Jan. 1, 2020 through June 2021 was rearrested after being freed.
That includes 8% rearrested for violent felonies — nearly twice the 5% rate for those released without any restrictions on their own recognizance, according to the data.
Elizabeth Glazer, MOCJ’s former director, was heavily involved in the formation and then expansion of supervised release. Speaking with THE CITY, she acknowledged that the program “was designed for a higher risk population.”
Glazer contends that supervised release defendants are similar to defendants for whom bail is set, estimating that re-arrest rates for both are similar.
Police from two Queens NYPD precincts are looking for an armed robber who targeted 7-Eleven stores in three different neighborhoods in just over an hour during the early morning of Wednesday, Apr. 17.
Police from the 106th Precinct in Ozone Park reported that the first heist went down just before 2:25 a.m. at the 7-Eleven located at 112-11 Liberty Ave. in South Richmond Hill. The perpetrator allegedly pulled out a handgun and demanded money from the 23-year-old man behind the counter, who complied, handing over $400 in cash from the register, police said.
A 22-year-old Jamaica Estates man was beaten and robbed in broad daylight three blocks west of Cunningham Park on Saturday, and police from the 107th Precinct in Fresh Meadows are looking for the suspects who attacked him with a baseball bat.
The incident occurred just after 7 p.m., as the victim was walking home in the vicinity of 189th Street and Aberdeen Avenue when he was set upon by the two assailants who struck him in the face and head with the baseball bat, police said. They forcibly removed his cell phone and fled in a black Pontiac Grand Am, heading northbound on 109th Street toward Union Turnpike.
An F train rider was assaulted inside the 169th Street subway station on Hillside Avenue near Homelawn Street in Jamaica Hills last week, and a dreadlocked suspect remains at large, according to the NYPD.
Police from the NYPD 107th Precinct in Fresh Meadows and Transit District 20 are looking for the dreadlocked stranger who approached the 37-year-old man while he was waiting on the northbound platform just before 3:30 a.m. on Friday, Apr. 12, and began to argue with him.
The Queens Rite Aid locations at 218-35 Hempstead Ave. in Queens Village and 95-14 63rd Dr. in Rego Park are among the 53 national locations the company announced earlier this month that will close soon.
A 76-year-old Jamaica Hills man died Tuesday after clinging to life for 11 days, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has reclassified his assault as a homicide investigation.
Police from the 107th Precinct in Fresh Meadows responded to a report of an assault in broad daylight at the intersection of 167th Street and Hillside Avenue just after 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Apr. 5.
The number of grand larcenies across Queens was down during the 28-day period from March 18 to April 14, compared to the same period of time last year, according to the latest crime stats released by the NYPD Monday. At the same time, rapes and robberies decreased significantly in northern and southern Queens, respectively.
The 2024 Bethpage Best of the Boro winners gathered on Wednesday, April 10th, for a night of celebrations at the Penthouse at Terrace in The Park, a Flushing Meadows—Corona Park venue boasting beautiful views of the city’s famous skyline.
The average rental price of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units across Queens increased 3.42% year-over-year from March 2023 to March 2024, according to a report released by the real estate firm M.N. S. Real Estate.
The FDNY announced Monday that a 2-alarm fire that tore through an Ozone Park deli on Sunday morning was caused by exploding uncertified lithium-ion batteries.
Firefighters responded to a call at around 6:22 a.m. of a fire in a commercial building at 94-24 Rockaway Blvd. and found heavy fire conditions inside a ground-floor deli.
Dr. Peter Bonadie, the chief executive officer of Kingdom Life Ministries International in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, says that the current war between Israel and Hamas is “a very deep spiritual problem and cannot be resolved by the United Nations or international opinions or sanctions.”