City’s get out of jail free card
No bail for petty crimes
Thousands of criminal suspects will be sprung without bail under a plan unveiled by Mayor de Blasio on Wednesday— even though many defendants never returned to court under pilot programs already under way.
Starting next year, the $ 17.8 million program would let about 3,400 defendants charged with lowlevel, nonviolent offenses — including some felonies — be placed under “supervised release” instead of getting locked up.
Police sources predicted it would lead to more crime, given the history of lowlevel offenders eventually escalating to violent felonies, including murder.
“It’s an awful plan. It’s not going to deter anybody. People are going to say, ‘ I can do this, and I don’t have to worry about any jail time because they have these other options now.’ I think it’s going to cause more problems,” said one source.
If peoplewant to stay out of jail, the source added, “the solution is for them to stop doing the crime.”
Nobail pilot programs have been in place in Queens since 2009 and Manhattan for the past two years.
But the results have been mixed — with 19 percent of those freed in Manhattan and 13 percent in Queens failing to show up for court dates.
A de Blasio spokeswoman argued that those figures are in line with the rest of the country.
Under the plan, supervision of suspects could range from regular checkins, inperson or by text message and include referrals to drug or mentalhealth counseling.
The city is still seeking proposals from nonprofits to develop a “riskassessment tool” to determine criteria for those who’d be eligible to go free.
NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. are on board.
“This program moves the city towards a more fair and equitable criminaljustice system by decreasing unnecessary detention for those individuals awaiting trial,” Bratton said in a statement.
Calls for bail reform intensified last month after the suicide of 22yearold Kalief Browder.
When he was 16, Browder’s family couldn’t make $ 3,000 bail on charges that he stole a backpack. He wound up in Rikers for three years, where he was beaten by other inmates and held in solitary before the charges against him were dropped.
Currently, about 41 percent of criminal defendants who pass through New York City courts every year are released on their own recognizance and another 14 percent — about 45,500 people— are held on bail.
A lawenforcement source worried the program could increase witness intimidation.
“Witnesses are more apt to testify if the perpetrator is locked up,” the source said. “If the perp is on the street, the perp can threaten them, intimidate them. When they’re in jail, it’s like a security blanket for the witness.”