$10M for pretrial services
Hochul unveils proposal; GOP voices crime rate concerns
The $216 billion executive budget unveiled this week by Gov. Kathy Hochul includes a $10 million allocation to provide pretrial services to help “divert people from unnecessary detention and at the same time keep communities.”
The proposal is the lone direct — or indirect — nod to the current maelstrom surrounding crimes alleged to have been committed by individuals who are awaiting trial.
The tense conversation around crimes committed during a defendant’s “pretrial” period has become an increasingly political topic following the Democrats’ sweeping changes to the state’s bail laws, which prompted law enforcement officials and Republican leadership to contend violent crime has increased as a result of what’s known as “bail reform.”
State data show about 2 percent of cases, or 2,000 instances, over a recent 12month period resulted in a person who was rearrested on a violent felony prior to their case’s disposition. The number of times a rearrest occurred during the pretrial phase prior to the changes in the law is not part of the state’s public data, leaving a gap in the ability to draw a comparative analysis.
Democratic leadership has been steadfast in its support for the 2019 changes to the state’s bail laws. Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewartcousins and Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie have been resolute in pushing back against any suggestion of walk backs to the laws.
“We want criminals certainly brought to justice, but we certainly don’t want to criminalize poverty,” Stewart-cousins said Wednesday during a Times Union’s Upstate Business interview. “That’s why we did the bail reform.”
Hochul’s proposal to add $10 million for pretrial services offers a modest nod toward both the criminal justice concerns advocates have raised and the alarm bells Republicans have sounded over public safety concerns.
U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi, a moderate Democrat from Long Island, is challenging Hochul in the Democratic primary and has called for walk-backs to the state’s bail laws as crime rates have soared, though the debate is heated over whether that surge has any connection to the bail statutes.
Hochul is also challenged by New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a progressive. Neither candidate raised more than a fraction of the $21 million Hochul did in this most recent filing period.
The $10 million pretrial services proposal in her budget is part of a $322 million “crime prevention and reduction strategies” program under the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, according to budget documents. Hochul’s administration pitched in its budget book that it was spending $224 million on gun violence prevention and violence interruption; some of the money between the two programs overlaps.
The specific pretrial services program is intended to go toward not-for-profits and government-operated programs that provide services that could include screening, assessments and supervision.
Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt has said he generally welcomes additional services that can help prevent crime and provide justice for victims, but on the governor’s specific budget proposals, he said it felt like “she’s moving around the edges without addressing the real meat of what’s going on.”
“The funny part is, that doesn’t even cost any money,” Ortt said at a news conference Wednesday outside the state Capitol. “You just have to change the law so that police officers, (district attorneys) and judges can keep people, who are committing crimes, in jail.”
Stewart-cousins, in her interview with the Times Union, noted that at times, people are accused of crimes that they ultimately are not found to have committed. The changes to the bail laws primarily targeted removing costly bail as the barrier to being released on misdemeanor and nonviolent felony charges.
“And I want to say, behind those numbers are people who are now still able to go to work, now still able to maintain housing, now still able to support their families and you don’t have the crumbling that happens around people who are held indiscriminately just because they don’t have a few bucks for a minor accusation,” she said.