De Blasio wants over three times more teen criminals freed without bail
Mayor Bill de Blasio hopes to “more than triple” the number of teens who are released from city jails with no bail on charges as serious as armed robbery, assault and burglary, The Post has learned.
New guidelines from the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice will also “significantly” expand the number of adults eligible for de Blasio’s no-bail Supervised Release Program, according to a memo sent to top city judges this month and obtained by The Post.
The policy changes — which take effect on Saturday — will let defendants between ages 16 and 19 qualify for the program’s Youth Engagement Track, which is now capped at age 17, except in Brooklyn.
It primarily covers “high-risk” teens charged with misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies but will be expanded to include first- and second-degree robbery, assault and burglary.
Those offenses generally involve using a deadly weapon or inflicting physical injury on a victim.
“Based on 2017 bail numbers for the affected ages and charges, these changes should more than triple the number of defendants eligible for the Youth Engagement Track,” wrote Miriam Popper, executive director of diversion initiatives for the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice.
The new policies also raise the threshold at which defendants are labeled a “high risk” for getting rearrested, by nearly doubling the number of “risk points” needed for that designation, from at least five to at least nine.
In addition, the city is eliminating the need for defendants to prove their “community ties” before arraignment to qualify for supervised release.
“Even in the fraction of cases where ties cannot ever be verified, judges are encouraged to allow SRP participation to continue as ‘presumptive’ and to impose sanctions only if the defendant did not appear in court or for other good causes,” Popper wrote.
Popper’s May 13 memo doesn’t detail how many accused criminals will likely go free as a result of the new guidelines, but says it will allow “a significantly greater number of suitable defendants” to score supervised release.
Teens who are part of the program get “placed on an intensive supervision schedule in the first month” and must also undergo psychological counseling known as cognitive behavioral therapy, the memo says.
For adults, the program “tailors requirements to the individual participants,” according to the Web site for the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice.
The expansion of the city’s Supervised Release Program is part of de Blasio’s controversial plan to shut down the Rikers Island jail complex, an effort he has been touting on the campaign trail as part of his long-shot presidential bid.
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“In our city, we have reduced our jail population about 30 percent already . . . We are ending the era of mass incarceration in New York City,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Although discretion for granting entry to the program will remain with judges, many fear they will have to adopt de Blasio’s new, more lenient standards or risk losing their jobs, court-system sources told The Post.
Judges are worried that criminal-defense lawyers will be able to effectively kill their careers by complaining to the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary, which reviews and recommends candidates for the bench, the sources said.
“There’s tremendous political pressure in this city, and it comes from the New York City government, it comes from the defenders who are emboldened,” one courthouse source said.
“Judges feel the pressure.”
A high-ranking NYPD official accused the de Blasio administration of adopting the new policies without thinking about the implications because “they don’t live in the neighborhoods where people are being robbed and assaulted.”
“Without bail, the perps will be thinking: ‘I’m in and I’m out. Nothing’s going to happen. What’s the big deal?’ ” the official said.
“People who have never been a victim of crime, they really don’t think about the consequences of this.”
De Blasio’s new policies set the stage for the statewide elimination of cash bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent offenses next year.
That move is part of a package of criminal-justice reforms that Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the mayor’s political rival, pushed as part of the April budget deal.
Additional reporting by Tina Moore
