New York City 'lab' studying bail reform for low-level offenders
By Joseph Ax
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City is looking into how to reform bail for low-level offenders as part of a campaign to provide relief to some of the approximately 47,000 people who are detained in New York City every year because they cannot afford bail.
The so-called "Bail Lab" will work with the state’s court system to test alternatives to money bail, speed up the payment process and give judges data to help them decide if some defendants can safely be released.
Tuesday's announcement by Mayor Bill de Blasio came three months after city officials said they would spend $18 million to implement a new system that allows judges to release eligible defendants without bail.
Advocates for bail reform have said the current system leaves impoverished defendants who cannot afford bail stuck in jail for months, and sometimes years, even if they have been charged with minor, non-violent offenses.
De Blasio vowed to press for changes following the suicide in June of 22-year-old Kalief Browder. Browder was imprisoned at the Rikers Island jail at the age of 16 after being accused of stealing a backpack. He spent three years there because he could not pay his bail.
“Whether or not someone is in a cell on Rikers Island cannot simply be determined by how much money they have in the bank,” the mayor said in a statement.
Earlier this month, the state’s chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, announced his own bail reform initiative, criticizing the “two-tier” justice system for those with resources and those without.
Lippman said he would appoint a judge in each borough to conduct automatic reviews of all bail determinations and would require regular status conferences before judges in cases involving defendants in custody to ensure bail remained warranted.
The Bail Lab is intended to provide research to back potential reforms. It also includes a “crowd-sourcing” website, www.bail-lab.nyc, that will allow city residents to submit their own ideas for fixing the system.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Toni Reinhold)
