Speaker 1: There are currently about two million people incarcerated in the US,
Speaker 1: and at any given time, many of them are defendants
Speaker 1: who are being held in jail while they await their
Speaker 1: trial because they can't afford to pay bail. If you're
Speaker 1: charged with a crime, a judge will often set bail.
Speaker 1: It's an amount you have to pay to be released
Speaker 1: until you're day in court. It's intended as an insurance
Speaker 1: policy of sorts to make sure you show up, but
Speaker 1: often judges set bail so high that defendants aren't able
Speaker 1: to pay. The result they have to sit behind bars
Speaker 1: until trial, a process that can take months or even years.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg City Lab reporters Sarah Holder and Fuller a Kinneby
Speaker 1: report that's one reason the US is the world's leading
Speaker 1: jailer per capita.
Speaker 2: The US is actually an outlier in its reliance on
Speaker 2: that system. In other places, bill bonds are illegal or
Speaker 2: an issue of last resort. In the even though we
Speaker 2: have this credo and this belief that you're innocent until
Speaker 2: proven guilty, you can still be sent to jail under
Speaker 2: that presumption of innocence because you can't pay a certain
Speaker 2: amount of bail.
Speaker 3: This is a very American issue. The issue of mass incarceration.
Speaker 3: Over the past thirty or forty years, the number of
Speaker 3: people in jail pre trial has like quadrupled.
Speaker 1: This has led to what critics call a two tiered
Speaker 1: system of justice.
Speaker 2: People who are able to pay that bail are able
Speaker 2: to go home to their families, get back into the
Speaker 2: community and await that court hearing, and people without the
Speaker 2: means cannot.
Speaker 1: Sarah and Fola have been looking into what happens to
Speaker 1: defendants in New York City, where thousands of people charged
Speaker 1: with crimes each year face the choice of paying up
Speaker 1: or going to jail, and in New York, jail often
Speaker 1: means Riker's Island. It's the city's largest detention facility, and
Speaker 1: it's made news in recent years for violent and dangerous conditions.
Speaker 1: Twenty seven people have died there since the beginning of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: Another detainee died today at Rikers Island. The city's Correction
Speaker 4: Department says thirty three year old Donnie Ubieira was found
Speaker 4: unresponsive in his cell.
Speaker 1: But here's why we're talking about this now. The city
Speaker 1: is looking to change the system to make it more
Speaker 1: fair and to reduce crowding in jails.
Speaker 2: New York is trying to redesign its pre trial release
Speaker 2: program to get more people out of places like Riker's Island.
Speaker 2: New York has introduced an alternate approach called supervisor release,
Speaker 2: where a judge can say, go home, come back for
Speaker 2: your court date, but in the meantime, you're going to
Speaker 2: have regular meetings with social workers and case managers that
Speaker 2: can help you stay out of jail again and get
Speaker 2: your life back on track.
Speaker 1: I'm wes Kasova today on the Big Take New York
Speaker 1: tests a real life life Get out of Jail card.
Speaker 1: New York City's supervised Release program is run by four nonprofits,
Speaker 1: each covering part of the city. In Queens, that organization
Speaker 1: is the Criminal Justice Agency, or CJA. It's the job
Speaker 1: of the caseworkers at CJA to meet with defendants and
Speaker 1: try to help them keep their lives on track while
Speaker 1: they await their court date. Fulla and Sarah went to
Speaker 1: CJA's office in the Q Gardens neighborhood of Queen's to
Speaker 1: see how the program works.
Speaker 3: When we visited the Q Garden's office, it's across the
Speaker 3: street from the Queen's County Criminal Court and around ten
Speaker 3: or eleven am. That's when clients starts rolling and the
Speaker 3: office starts buzzing a bit. And on the day we
Speaker 3: were there, we saw one case for having to deal
Speaker 3: with unscheduled visits and having to do like three different
Speaker 3: sessions when she only had one schedule. And that's because
Speaker 3: of the office's proximity to the courthouse. It's easy for
Speaker 3: clients to walk across the street and pop in and
Speaker 3: do their check in when they finish hearing.
Speaker 1: And Sarah, you met with some of the people who
Speaker 1: work at the program.
Speaker 2: We spoke to Joanna Jizeus, who runs CJA's supervis Release program.
Speaker 4: I'm the executive director of Supervise Release and I have
Speaker 4: been working with CJA for twenty six years. I'd say, well,
Speaker 4: our general overall mission is to you know, it's to
Speaker 4: help the courts reduce unnecessary pre trialed attention, right, and
Speaker 4: the goal of this program was to help people return
Speaker 4: to court. I think here specifically we do that Queen's
Speaker 4: Supervise Release by helping people stay in the communities that
Speaker 4: they live in, so helping them maintain their jobs and
Speaker 4: their housing situations, because when they are detained, they lose
Speaker 4: the ability to be employed or to stay in their
Speaker 4: home and those things can go away.
Speaker 2: We also spoke to Sasha Tyler Best.
Speaker 5: I'm a clinical supervisor and I've been working with CJ
Speaker 5: for almost four years. I think that we're like It
Speaker 5: kind of reminds me of having a guidance counselor like
Speaker 5: someone who's there to make sure that you meet deadlines
Speaker 5: and to support you and help you sign up for
Speaker 5: the things you want to sign up for.
Speaker 2: They meet with folks in these interview rooms to talk
Speaker 2: about how things are going. They talk about mental health struggles,
Speaker 2: they talk about status of finding new housing. They lend
Speaker 2: people interview clothes if they're going out for a job interview.
Speaker 2: They're giving out snack bags with fruit cups and soup.
Speaker 2: People can get metro cards so they can actually make
Speaker 2: it to their court hearings and to their check ins.
Speaker 2: They provide a whole lot more services than the supervision.
Speaker 3: One client we spoke to said his session felt like
Speaker 3: therapy and it helped him navigate a system that can
Speaker 3: be brutal and hard time, and so the program helped
Speaker 3: connect him with the job. Yeah, caseworkers do a lot
Speaker 3: more than just insure someone returned to court. Even though
Speaker 3: that's their bandate.
Speaker 1: CJA started the city's first supervised release program in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine. Today, it serves many more people than
Speaker 1: it did back then. Partly that's because at first the
Speaker 1: program was only for people accused of nonviolent offenses, but
Speaker 1: three years ago, those charged with more serious crimes also
Speaker 1: became eligible. Here's joe Aanne DeJesus again. She's CJA's executive director.
Speaker 4: So initially in two thousand and nine, we were set
Speaker 4: up as a non violent felony program, so no violent
Speaker 4: offenses were allowed in the program at all. Since January first,
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, all charges are eligible for the program, so
Speaker 4: we get what we never used to see before, things
Speaker 4: like rape charges, murder charges, serious robbery charges, robbery in
Speaker 4: the first degree second degree, which are violent felony offenses.
Speaker 4: We get all of those charges.
Speaker 1: Right about now, you might be thinking releasing people charged
Speaker 1: with nonviolent offenses is one thing, but is it so
Speaker 1: bad for those accused of committing violent crimes to stay
Speaker 1: in custody. The answer is complicated. Not all defendants are
Speaker 1: eligible for the pre trial release program. Judges can deny
Speaker 1: bail to someone they consider to be a threat to
Speaker 1: the community. And they would remain in custody until trial.
Speaker 1: Defendants who are admitted to the program are people a
Speaker 1: judge has decided are a low risk to others, and
Speaker 1: Fuller raises another argument that advocates make.
Speaker 3: It's very easy to point a program like this and saying, well,
Speaker 3: they're letting criminals out of jail. That's not true. These
Speaker 3: people have not been convicted. They still have a right
Speaker 3: to their day in court, and this program is meant
Speaker 3: to allow them to wait that period out in the
Speaker 3: community home while they go through the system.
Speaker 1: Now, surprisingly, though there's been public and political backlash to
Speaker 1: supervised release.
Speaker 2: Bail reform has become a boogeyman, just like defund the
Speaker 2: police had been a boogeyman. In twenty twenty after the
Speaker 2: killing of George Floyd, you know, a lot of jurisdictions
Speaker 2: were taking a closer look at their police budgets. Now
Speaker 2: the conversation has expanded a bit to look at the
Speaker 2: entire criminal justice system and questioning the role of bail
Speaker 2: and jail in our society. New York State is a
Speaker 2: good example of a place that's really tackling that question
Speaker 2: head on. Kathy Hokl, a Democrat, is our governor. She's
Speaker 2: been at the forefront of having to make our decisions
Speaker 2: about this issue. Her challenger, Lee Zelden, a Republican, ran
Speaker 2: to the right of her on the last election cycle
Speaker 2: and was running ads that painted bail reform among other
Speaker 2: police reforms, as this horrible change that would have violent
Speaker 2: criminals running free in the streets for good reasons.
Speaker 3: Time on Kathy Hoko's watch is rising and liberal policies
Speaker 3: like cashless, veiled and not enforcing laws.
Speaker 2: Are involded in criminals. The solution a new governor leaves
Speaker 2: Elvin's an army bevern and a former prosecutor, and Kathy
Speaker 2: Hochel rolled back bail reforms and made it easier for
Speaker 2: judges to set bail for certain crimes because of that
Speaker 2: political pressure.
Speaker 3: And these are potent political messages. When you run ads
Speaker 3: that say that you know they're going to be violent
Speaker 3: criminals in the streets, people really respond to that. You
Speaker 3: see this pressure on organizations and on systems like the
Speaker 3: Supervisor Release program and on organizations like CJA because they
Speaker 3: face this political pressure on one side, and then they
Speaker 3: have also faced the pressure of having to do the
Speaker 3: actual work every day.
Speaker 1: When we come back a very busy day in the
Speaker 1: life of a Criminal Justice Agency caseworker.
Speaker 4: If you're supposed to meet with your clients, you know
Speaker 4: you have eighty clients when you're supposed to meet with them,
Speaker 4: even you know, fifteen to twenty minutes a day, how
Speaker 4: many can you fit in?
Speaker 1: A New York's Criminal Justice Agency doesn't only see people
Speaker 1: once they've been released awaiting trial. The city also tasks
Speaker 1: CJA with assessing defendants before they're arraigned to give the
Speaker 1: court a better sense of whether a person is a
Speaker 1: good bet for pre trial release. They look at things
Speaker 1: like their housing situation, employment history, and any previous warrants.
Speaker 1: These assessments are important because judges with crowded dockets only
Speaker 1: have a short time to make a decision about each case.
Speaker 3: Before someone gets in front of a judge, they've been
Speaker 3: interviewed by CJA, and CJA does an assessment to gauge
Speaker 3: the likelihood of this person returning to court. Sarah and
Speaker 3: I actually sat in on arrangments for hours at the
Speaker 3: Queen's gott In Criminal Court. We saw this process happen
Speaker 3: over and over and over again. These hearings take I
Speaker 3: feel like some people wouldn't believe, but they take five minutes.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter what the charges are. Five minutes they're
Speaker 3: cycling through folks.
Speaker 1: It's then up to the judge to decide what life
Speaker 1: will look like for the accused before their next court date.
Speaker 1: If the judge opts to enroll the defendant in a
Speaker 1: supervised release program, they need to determine just how much
Speaker 1: supervision that person should get. That's done with a system
Speaker 1: of tiers and levels. The higher the level, the more supervision.
Speaker 1: Joanna Jesus from CJA explains it like this.
Speaker 4: What it is is it's a combination of factors. It's
Speaker 4: the charge at arrangement, whether or not it's bail eligible
Speaker 4: or not, combined with CJ's release assessment score. That is
Speaker 4: how you land on a tier and a level. However,
Speaker 4: big caveat is the judges get to override that level
Speaker 4: whenever they see a person in front of them in
Speaker 4: that arrangement process. If they feel that there's a need
Speaker 4: for additional support, the judges can mandate and we then
Speaker 4: have to follow whatever the judicial mandate is.
Speaker 1: People at the lowest level of supervision might only have
Speaker 1: to check in with a caseworker once a month. Those
Speaker 1: at the highest level may have to see them every week,
Speaker 1: which can keep caseworkers very busy.
Speaker 4: When caseloads are this high. We have case managers at
Speaker 4: the lower level that have eighty clients. Sometimes we're kicking
Speaker 4: people out of the office at night. Sometimes people are
Speaker 4: frustrated sometimes because it's a lot. And if you think
Speaker 4: about having eighty clients in a seven hour work day
Speaker 4: times five days a week, that's thirty five hours a week.
Speaker 4: And if you're supposed to meet with your clients, you know,
Speaker 4: you have eighty clients, and you're supposed to meet with
Speaker 4: them even you know, fifteen to twenty minutes a day,
Speaker 4: how many can you fit in a day?
Speaker 1: Often these check ins are quick in routine, but sometimes
Speaker 1: the caseworkers have to help people sort out bigger problems
Speaker 1: in their lives. Even with rising caseloads, the CJA caseworkers
Speaker 1: take on as many people as the courts send their way.
Speaker 1: That's because they know what the alternative would look like
Speaker 1: for many of these defendants. Without supervised release, they would
Speaker 1: be in jail and likely Rikers Island. Here's Bloomberg Sarah
Speaker 1: Holder again.
Speaker 2: It's rough. The caseworkers really care about the work that
Speaker 2: they're doing, and they know that every client they see
Speaker 2: is a client that's not in Rikers, and so they
Speaker 2: believe that having more clients is a worthy cause. But
Speaker 2: it's hard to manage all the people and to really
Speaker 2: give them the time that they need to set them
Speaker 2: up for success.
Speaker 4: I just know that we can't close our doors right,
Speaker 4: not like we say, oh, we're full, Like we can't
Speaker 4: close our doors. And the more the judges believe in
Speaker 4: what we can do and sort of like linking people up,
Speaker 4: the more they will release people to us.
Speaker 1: When we come back. New York City puts more money
Speaker 1: into the pre trial release program now that CJA and
Speaker 1: the other nonprofits in the city have been doing this
Speaker 1: work for more than a decade. Here's the big question.
Speaker 1: Is this growing pre trial release program working out? Is
Speaker 1: it a success? And if so, how do they measure it.
Speaker 2: Case workers at CJA have told us that they can
Speaker 2: really see the progress that specific clients are making. They
Speaker 2: can get a lot out of the program if they
Speaker 2: want to. Sasha talked us through an experience with a client.
Speaker 5: One of my clients has been making a lot of progress. Actually,
Speaker 5: he's able to take the resources that we give him
Speaker 5: and sign up for one of the construction programs, which
Speaker 5: is great, and he came in and he was like,
Speaker 5: I don't have time because I'm going to my orientation.
Speaker 5: So that was a good moment, Whereas the time that
Speaker 5: I met him before that, he was kind of like,
Speaker 5: I don't know what I'm going to do. I need
Speaker 5: a new job, and he's like, I don't know how
Speaker 5: do I do this? And so it was just like
Speaker 5: empowering him to take these resources and I love that
Speaker 5: he's doing it because he's doing it on his own
Speaker 5: with information that we've given him.
Speaker 1: Joanna Jesus from CJA says her idea of success has
Speaker 1: changed as the program itself has evolved.
Speaker 4: Initially, we used to talk about sort of success, like
Speaker 4: how many people were having their cases disposed in a
Speaker 4: successful way, right, Like there was a plea down. So
Speaker 4: you came into the program with a felony and you
Speaker 4: pled down to a misdemeanor or a misdemeanor and you
Speaker 4: pled down to a violation. So I would consider that
Speaker 4: a success because you've been in the program, the courts
Speaker 4: aware that you're participating, and now your attorney is able
Speaker 4: to negotiate a better plea for you. I think also
Speaker 4: when clients are not rectivating, that's a measure of success.
Speaker 4: I think the number of times were able to get
Speaker 4: somebody into housing or a job when they came to
Speaker 4: us and they haven't had a job or even benefits. Right,
Speaker 4: we really try to be a source of information and
Speaker 4: knowledge and get them to where they need to be
Speaker 4: because they have to make their own choices. Ultimately, when
Speaker 4: we're not in the picture anymore, when they're not working
Speaker 4: with us, they have to be able to like figure
Speaker 4: out where to go for information or how to make
Speaker 4: that information work for them. But at some point people
Speaker 4: have to feel empowered to like navigate systems. I think
Speaker 4: that goes a long way. I think people are afraid
Speaker 4: to ask for help sometimes and a lot of them
Speaker 4: don't even have the core support. So being able to
Speaker 4: tell them it's okay to seek out the support you
Speaker 4: need is okay.
Speaker 1: And Bloomberg's fola a kin to be points to another
Speaker 1: way to assess how the program is doing. He told
Speaker 1: us about some data that may answer critics who say
Speaker 1: it's letting dangerous people go free.
Speaker 3: So if you take a look at the number is
Speaker 3: most people are returning to court and of those folks,
Speaker 3: one percent are rearrested while they're out on supervisor release,
Speaker 3: and fewer than two percent of those folks are re
Speaker 3: arrested for violent failling defenses. At the same time, you
Speaker 3: can see that all the actors in the criminal justice
Speaker 3: system seem to trust the program. Prosecutors escort, we see
Speaker 3: in defense attorney's ascort, we seen judges suggested, and so
Speaker 3: clearly like there's a trust in the program, and you
Speaker 3: could see that play out in the court system.
Speaker 1: With a growing number of people entering the program. The
Speaker 1: city is now going to invest more money in CJA
Speaker 1: so it's caseworkers aren't swamped all the time.
Speaker 3: The city is set aside an additional thirty six million
Speaker 3: dollars for the program so that the providers can hire
Speaker 3: more caseworkers and continue to take on clients.
Speaker 2: CJ right now has seventy five caseworkers. They want to
Speaker 2: hire about thirty more people to deal with the surge.
Speaker 2: One of the times we went to their office, one
Speaker 2: of the case managers lit up thinking that we were
Speaker 2: one of the new people that they had hired. But no,
Speaker 2: no cigar. So more help is coming potentially, this influx
Speaker 2: of cash and the city is also trying to put
Speaker 2: aside some of that money towards more intensive work with
Speaker 2: clients that need more intensive help that have a history
Speaker 2: of recidivism, so adding an emphasis on in person meetings
Speaker 2: with caseworkers that are not as overwhelmed, specifically for the
Speaker 2: smaller group of folks that need the extra support.
Speaker 1: And the program is getting attention even outside of New York.
Speaker 1: Other cities and states are now experimenting with bail reform
Speaker 1: programs of their own.
Speaker 2: Illinois is ending cash bail altogether, and Los Angeles County
Speaker 2: will make almost all misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies ineligible for
Speaker 2: bail on October first. So bail reform writ large. Though
Speaker 2: it is a fraught political issue, it's spreading from place
Speaker 2: to place, and on the ground where these reforms are
Speaker 2: taking place, people are looking at programs like New York
Speaker 2: Supervisor Release program as a model for how to actually
Speaker 2: implement those changes. Is in a successful way?
Speaker 1: Where do you think this goes from here? New York
Speaker 1: is investing in the program, other states are starting to
Speaker 1: adapt similar measures. Do you think that this will take off,
Speaker 1: that paying to get out of jail will become a
Speaker 1: thing of the past at some point.
Speaker 2: We've seen the pendulum swing both ways. We talked about
Speaker 2: the defund the police movement. Some police departments did cut
Speaker 2: their budgets, others left them the same. It's sort of
Speaker 2: the same with bail reform, where some cities and states
Speaker 2: are moving away from bail, others are reversing some of
Speaker 2: those reforms. Even New York has done so. So it's
Speaker 2: a political push and pull. But you can tell that
Speaker 2: in New York, programs like this are not going away
Speaker 2: anytime soon. The city is committing millions more to it
Speaker 2: in the budget, and some of the data and the
Speaker 2: human stories from people from the program might shed some
Speaker 2: light on how it's working on the ground without getting
Speaker 2: into some of the political realities that might become challenges
Speaker 2: down the.
Speaker 1: Sarah Fola, thanks so much for taking that time to
Speaker 1: share your reporting.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thanks for having us, Thanks.
Speaker 1: For listening to us here at the Big Take. It's
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Speaker 1: us questions or comments to Big Take at bloomberg dot Net.
Speaker 1: The supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Bergolina.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Catherine Fink. Rebecca Shasson is our producer.
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Sam Gebauer. The editor of this
Speaker 1: episode is Caitlin Kenny Raphael I'm Seely is our engineer.
Speaker 1: Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin i'm wes Kasova.
Speaker 1: We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take.