The United States Court of Appeals in New York has upheld the sentence imposed by a federal judge although it was stiffer than the guidelines recommended for the weapons conviction. The judge said the punishment was warranted as an enhanced deterrent to illegal weapons in urban areas. While federal judges are no longer bound by mandatory sentencing guidelines and have some discretion in sentencing, in United States v Cavera (in pdf), the court imposed a harsher sentence, focusing on where the crime took place and where the fruits of the crime were going.
The case involved trafficking in weapons in order to bring guns into New York City. When the defendant, Gerard Cavera, pled guilty in the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn in 2005 to conspiracy to deal in and transport firearms, he could have been sentenced to 12 to 18 months in prison and a fine of between $3,000 and $5,000. However, in a detailed decision, the sentencing judge, Charles Sifton, increased the sentence to two years in prison and a $60,000 fine. (If Cavera had faced similar New York State charges, he would have faced a far more severe punishment -- 15 years in prison.)
Federal guidelines are advisory and are meant to create some uniformity in all federal districts around the country. Sifton determined that exceeding the recommended sentence was appropriate in this case because of the damage inflicted by guns in urban areas, such as New York. A stiffer sentence, he said, was intended to "deter gun trafficking into the large metropolitan areas of this country" where homicide rates are greater and the sale of illegal weapons more profitable than in the nation as a whole.
In an unusual procedure, the entire Court of Appeals heard arguments. The judges upheld Sifton's rationale that, since deterrence was the goal, he could consider deterrence in a particular location. For a judge to do this, he or she must address the nature of the offense and the history of the defendant; the need for the sentence to reflect the seriousness of the crime, provide punishment and afford adequate deterrence; and the necessity to protect the public.
Cavera and others had worked with a person who they did not realize was an informant to sell and transport guns to New York from Florida in 2003. There were approximately two dozen handguns at a price of $16,600, all expected to be sold by other individuals on the streets of New York.
"Firearms," Sifton noted, "smuggled into New York City commonly end up in the hands of those who could not otherwise legally acquire them, are frequently used for illegitimate purposes, and have the potential to create a substantially greater degree of harm when in an urban environment such as New York City than in the United States generally." He observed that the population density of Brooklyn, the area covered by the court, exceeds 35,000 per square mile, compared with 78 for the rest of the country. "New York City is the most densely populated urban area of the country," the judge said, and so at greater risk of harm due to the presence of illegal guns.
It followed, then, that "stiffer sentences for gun traffickers who move their wares into large metropolitan areas are also supported by the purpose of gun trafficking laws, which is to prevent lax firearm laws in one state for undermining the more restrictive laws of other states," Sifton said. Despite that, the judge noted, "In states with strict gun control laws, such as New York, a higher percentage of guns used in crimes arrived from out of state."
The federal sentencing guidelines, in Sifton's view, do "not reflect objective variations in the increased risk of death or injury that the offense creates in different parts of the country." Instead, he said, the federal firearm laws is geared to more rural parts of the country where guns are commonly used for recreation and are less likely to kill or injure people than they are in this city. With that in mind, Sifton said, this case called for a tougher sentence.
Emily Jane Goodman is a New York State Supreme Court JusticeÂ
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Who would have guessed that our former governor would be caught up in a prostitution scandal or that Wall Street would have crumbled so dramatically?
The prominent New Yorkers we asked to predict what 2008 would bring certainly didn't. They saw the state's junior senator as president, not as secretary of state. They thought we would have congestion pricing.
U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel predicted we would invest in affordable housing -- not that he would be at the center of a housing scandal.
Knowing that sometimes people swing blindly the first time, we here at Gotham Gazette decided to give them another chance.
This year, some think the economy will recover, the mayor's race will be competitive and the state will bail out our transit system. See what some New Yorkers think is in store for 2009.
The mayor and the City Council put a hiring freeze on new elected officials.
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein will teach a class at the UFT Secondary Charter School and become a key advocate for teacher due process (tenure) and lowering class size.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg will abandon his bid for a third term and instead take over the New York Stock Exchange, where he will implement accountability and data initiatives. Traders and hedge fund managers form a union.
The debate over whether to continue mayoral control of New York City schools will come down to a final-hours coin flip on State Street.
Gov. David Paterson will appear on Saturday Night Live, and realizing his true calling, join the cast.
And in all seriousness, the Administration for Children's Services will pay 28,000 home day care providers the money they are owed by state law.
President-elect Barack Obama and new Education Secretary Arne Duncan will work collaboratively with teachers and their unions, and as a result begin to make substantial progress in advancing student achievement. Their philosophy will show naysayers that successful education reform is done with teachers, not done to teachers.
In the midst of this challenging time, New Yorkers are resilient and charitable. This is the time to work together and fight for educational opportunity for our students and economic security for all New Yorkers.
Michael Bloomberg announces unpopular budget cuts, but spends lavishly on his campaign.
Bill Thompson and Anthony Weiner complain about Bloomberg's budget cuts and lavish campaign spending.
Democrats for Bloomberg make an earlier than expected appearance. David Paterson doesn't officially join that group, but reporters suspect he's a card-carrying member.
Paychex Founder Tom Golisano holds secret meetings with everyone running for mayor; "aides to Golisano" confirm the meetings but don't share any details. Then, Golisano holds a press conference and gets some ink from New York City reporters about his thoughts on the mayor's race, before disappearing upstate.
Golisano then toys with the idea of buying all those media outlets that didn't cover him.
Kevin Sheekey leaves City Hall for Bloomberg's campaign, makes a lot of money and doesn't return.
State Sen. Jeff Klein gets photographed measuring the curtains inside Malcolm Smith's office.
Newspaper publishers apply for a federal bailout.
Twitter becomes so popular that it's no longer cool.
Norman Siegel and Mark Green have a series of historic debates about who truly represents New York's liberal left.
David Weprin sports a pocket protector to bolster his image as a fiscal expert.
Whoever Paterson doesn't pick for the U.S. Senate starts getting talked about as possible gubernatorial candidates.
And Gotham Gazette gets Drudged for its policy-focused interview with Eliot Spitzer, which starts off with the phrase, "If I didn't get caught, I would have told Shelly Silver..."
New York public schools and civic organizations see a flood of hugely qualified job applicants, as newly minted graduates decide that maybe Wall Street isn't the career for them.
The jobs that do remain in finance and the regulatory sector are increasingly filled by women. Big bets decline, as do massive bonuses. But actual scrutiny of transactions increases.
Overcome by schadenfreude, New Yorkers at last learn how to spell it.
2009 in New York turns out better than anyone expects as I write this on Dec. 13, 2008. At least, people will look back on it that way years from now.
While 200,000-plus jobs are lost statewide, and wrenching decisions are made about tax hikes and service cuts, New York remembers that there's more to economic life than Wall Street. And we discover that Wall Street still has a pulse to boot. The insane bonuses and leverage ratios are gone, but finance is finance and those people will always find ways to make money. New York is still the trophy address to have to compete with London and Tokyo etc. for world-class investment. It is not the year of the Charlotte Stock Exchange. Let's just hope they don't try to securitize zero percent interest Treasury bills!
We remember that other sectors of the economy also really matter around here: higher education and medicine, for example. Boston has nothing on us as an economy driven by smarts.
We have tourism too, plus the arts and entertainment, technology, and exports and imports of all imaginable kinds. Immigration remains a special economic gift to New York as immigrants continue to expand import-export entrepreneurship and decentralized financial networks. Remember why finance took hold here in the first place – New York was an international hub of commerce. It still is.
The credit squeeze slowly eases in 2009. With that and no-interest loans, the dollar remains stable but low, and international tourists flock once again to NY.
Our new U.S. senator, Shirley Jackson, builds visibility for our existing technology sector and helps secure federal funding for a Hudson Valley R&D corridor extending from Manhattan to Troy. And, of course, New York still captures the imagination of ambitious creative people from everywhere else. Whatever decline in real estate values we endure will have the silver lining of sustaining large scale immigration, and making bohemia possible again. Bohemia, like immigration, fuels innovation and long-term value in the housing market.
Anthony Weiner will win the Democratic mayoral nomination as the candidate from the angry middle class. Mayor Bloomberg, running as an independent, also secures the Republican nomination. The winner in November will be determined by the state of the economy and populist anger at the mayor. If he is seen as deftly managing the recession and building for the future, he will win, and Weiner will look like a whiner. If he is seen as raising taxes and cutting services while being tone deaf to people's pain, he'll become "that billionaire" and he will lose.
Similarly, President Obama's change we can believe in will be judged by how much his stimulus package is spent on real innovation and real infrastructure building. 2009 will tell. Weatherizing federal office buildings may give people work, but it won't spur the next generation of economic growth.
The Ravitch Commission's recommendations will be adopted almost unchanged and the city will be grateful for the next 30 years as world-class mass transit infrastructure development attracts sustained private sector economic growth.
On the down side, AJ Burnett and CC Sabathia will both get injured. The new Yankee Stadium will have many gold-plated empty seats. After Citigroup files for Chapter 11, Citi Field will change its name to Debits Field, pleasing Dodger fans of a certain age.
Bernie Madoff and Marc Dreier will both find religion in prison, and vow to devote their lives to helping others. Michael Milken will consult.
Donald Trump will change his name to Chrysler and ask for a federal bailout.
David Letterman will move his show to 9pm.
In a political stunner, capo di tutti capi of New York City politics Mike "Nine Zeroes" Bloomberg is denied a third term, even after spending $100 million plus, making many offers that couldn't be refused but ultimately were, by a majority of NYC voters.
New Yorkers’ disinterest in history will reach new heights in 2009.
After months of media claims that "we are in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression,” economists will realize that most people have no idea what the Great Depression is. The New York Times will conduct a survey that will find that 91 percent of New Yorkers think it was “when everyone was sad because they hadn’t invented Prozac yet.”
2009 will mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Henry Hudson, an English explorer who sailed for the Dutch. Hudson traveled up the river that would one day bear his name in a ship called the Half Moon. Again, New Yorkers will be baffled. Another Times survey will find that most Gotham residents will define the Half Moon as a “wardrobe malfunction caused by low-rise blue jeans.”
The Manhattan and Queensboro Bridges turn 100 in 2009. Keeping with the recent trend of renaming our bridges for historically inappropriate persons, the Manhattan Bridge will be rechristened the Senator Caroline Kennedy Bridge, and the Queensboro will be renamed for a Kennedy to be named later. Defenders of the change will invoke the Sarah Palin rationale, claiming that Caroline deserves the honor because she can see the bridge from her penthouse window (with binoculars). The name changes will utterly devastate Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz because his attempts to rename the spans Brooklyn Bridge 2 and Brooklyn Bridge 3 will go ignored.
Atlantic Yards will not be built.
We've made it to the end of the year, and our city is still standing. For that, we should be grateful. On the other hand, we're a bit like the man falling off the Empire State Building who, on passing the 22nd floor, says to himself, "so far, so good."
We're in a downward spiral, hoping that we're somehow going to have a happy ending. But we haven't yet crashed to the ground in part because, as the New York Building Congress pointed out in mid-October, momentum from New York's historic 2003-2008 building boom has continued to drive up some residential and nonresidential construction.
The city looks a little bit better off than it actually is. Major projects all over New York are slowing or stopping altogether. The most mesmerizing are the highly subsidized, politically favored, allegedly private sector projects, for which Atlantic Yards is the poster child. Forest City Ratner has halted work and laid off staff while asking for even more government subsidy. Will our elected officials really have the gall to raise our already excessively high taxes while directing hundreds of millions of dollars more into Bruce Ratner's sink hole in downtown Brooklyn?
Let's hope that 2009 becomes the year in which corporate socialism, and its bloated projects, is ended in New York once and for all.
2009 is not shaping up to be a good year. Last year at this time there was no consensus about a recession. What a difference a few months make.
The current recession will last well into next year and beyond, and it will unfortunately prove to be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Cutbacks can be expected in all city services since so much wealth has been destroyed in the markets and with it, tax revenues. On the brighter side, the first years of the Depression coincided with the last years of Prohibition, but there was no shortage of cheer to go around in New York. Speakeasies then outnumbered grocery stores in some parts of the city.
2009 will be one of the most challenging years for New Yorkers in recent memory.
Struggling families and businesses throughout the city will feel the continued squeeze of a shrinking economy, growing job losses, ever-tightening credit, and the persistent threat of home foreclosures.
To respond to these challenges, I predict New Yorkers will demand new leadership that will change the way business is done in our city – fewer give-a-ways to the rich and more protections for hardworking families and small businesses. With strong leadership and a collective spirit, New York City will bounce back as it has done before and show its grit, resolve and resiliency.
Mike Bloomberg will find his reelection campaign does not turn out to be the coronation he was expecting.
The web-based fundraising and communication techniques pioneered by Howard Dean's campaign and perfected by Barack Obama's campaign will be used in the next New York City mayor's race
Subway fares will not go up 25 percent but the real threat is to the long term capital plan for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In 2009, we will learn if our political leadership can match the talents and courage of Hugh Carey and Ed Koch, or if we will have the revival of the three guys in a room that got us into this fiscal mess.
By this time next year the media will still be looking for some way to diminish President Obama's stature, but they will not succeed. Our new president will have a tough, but successful year.
The Yankees and Mets will have to find a way to sell tickets to regular New Yorkers or risk losing their fan base. If they are not careful, the new stadiums will reinforce the idea that live major league baseball is not available to the rest of us. Of course we can all watch CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett on HDTV's that just look like real life, and we can just pretend we're at the game.
We will finally have federal policy on global warming here in the United States (I confess, I predicted this for 2008 too).
Columbia and the New School will both recruit new provosts. The one at Columbia will last longer.
We will avoid another great depression and start to climb out of this great recession.
The night before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is set to vote on a whopping fare hike and harsh service cuts in late March, the state legislature will pass a tax package that will soften the blow of an increase and block the worst service cuts. The base subway and bus fare will rise to $2.25 and a 30-day unlimited-ride MetroCard from the current $81 to $89. However, it will take until the late fall for the legislature to enact a new five-year rebuilding program for the transit system.
A federal judge will rule that the council's vote to overrule two referenda votes of the public to limit the terms of city officials violated the First Amendment rights of city voters - and all hell will break loose!
Mayor Bloomberg will participate in the city's landmark campaign finance law and limit his campaign spending to his total spending in the general election to $6 million - not!
The state will permit the transportation authority to toll the East River bridges, but only for vehicles driven by motorists who are visitors from very, very distant galaxies.
Governor Paterson will flirt with the idea of appointing Tina Fey to the U.S. Senate by only if Al Franken is elected as the junior Senator from Minnesota.
My prediction for 2009 is that New Yorkers will do what we have always done during times of great difficulty. We will stand up. We will band together.
I predict that we will see a rise in volunteerism. We will see New Yorkers helping neighbors, friends, family, and complete strangers. We will all find ways to do more with less, and to make up in work and passion what we may lack in resources. We will act responsibly today, lest we face even bigger problems down the line.
No one expects New York City to be able to turn things around quickly. But New Yorkers are used to defying expectations.
I would say that the one thing we can count on in 2009 would be the growing disparity of wealth in this city. So far, nearly every proposal made by both the governor and the mayor is for more taxes and fees on working- and middle-class New Yorkers to carry us through the new Depression, along with layoffs and pension cuts for public employees. Meanwhile, the wealthy are being asked to contribute almost nothing. This is not only unfair. It also will not work.
The city's worsening economic problems will be broad-based, but will have a particularly severe impact on the poor and working poor, nonprofits, real estate brokers, black car drivers and owners of cocktail lounges selling $15 saketinis. There will be a modest spike in the number of outer-borough middle class residents who leave the city altogether, prompted by the weak job market, deteriorating subway service, under-performing public schools and higher fares/taxes.
Dozens of bank branches and a handful of national drug store chain stores across the five boroughs will shut their doors, creating at least some new opportunities for independently owned businesses.
Rising commercial vacancy rates and plunging office rents could lead to a wave of start-ups with growth potential in technology and creative fields, similar to how the weak real estate market of the early 1990s helped give rise to Silicon Alley.
The state legislature's eventual response to this economic and fiscal crisis will remind New Yorkers, yet again, that the city has few friends in Albany and that the legislature truly is the most dysfunctional such body in America.
NYPD Officer Patrick Pogan is convicted of assaulting a cyclist
during a Critical Mass bike ride, and then ordered by the judge to clear bike lanes of placard abusers and double parked cars.
The city, state and Metropolitan Transportation Authority keep the transportation system from collapsing and will actually increase mass transit service. The State Legislature will pass a law to mandate Paris-style bike share integrated into New York City's public transit system with 50,000 bikes and 3,000 stations reclaimed from parking spaces. The catch: they would charge bikers $20/hour and use the revenue to save the MTA.
Gov. Paterson sells Sen. Clinton's seat to George Soros and uses the revenue to save the MTA.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Speaker Christine Quinn will hold a joint press conference to apologize for misleading statements made during the term-limits debate: Both had repeatedly insisted the public could actually choose not to re-elect them in November. They acknowledge that out in the last 107 City Council races, 98 percent of the incumbents were reappointed. They admit council members have only a slightly less chance of returning to office than former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein did during his last re-election bid. (He garnered 101 percent of the vote.)
For the first time in more than four decades, elected officials will abide by the City Charter and begin to allocate adequate expense dollars to maintain, secure and program parks.
The Bloomberg administration will apologize for installing more than 100 million pounds of chemically laden recycled tires in our parks and schools and realize natural grass is good for the environment.
The city will voluntarily agree to test all materials installed in playgrounds for heat before they burn more children.
Mayor Bloomberg will initiate community-based planning and consultation for all park projects. He agrees to send out $400 rebate checks to victims of poor park policies. The program will be suspended 24 minutes later after 311 is overwhelmed by calls from residents living near the new Yankee Stadium, the Van Cortlandt Park water filtration plant, Washington Square, the Ridgewood Reservoir, Randall's Island, Union Square, the planned Brooklyn Bridge Park and others. The mayor will respond, "Don't they know we're experiencing the golden age of parks?"
The New York Yankees will give back their city financing and admit the new stadium places an undue burden on taxpayers.
After being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future, all 29 Council members who voted to ignore two voter referendums on term limits will have a sudden change of heart and not seek re-election. Bloomberg holds out. Tipped off about the coming visitation, he posts extra security at his Upper East Side townhouse and prevents entry. However, the next day -- after receiving a note left by the spirit saying he would return soon -- the mayor agrees to participate in the city's campaign finance program.
Mayor reads fine print, discovers it is Central Park not Central Parking Lot, bans cars from Olmstead jewel. "If you want to run over a jogger or knock down a child, do it on Queens Boulevard like everybody else."
Patti Lupone leaps from stage, savagely pummels audience member texting during final number of final performance of Gypsy. Although the incident is witnessed by a packed house, Lupone is acquitted and carried from courtroom on shoulders of cheering theater-fans.
City to fund solid gold caps for Yankees and Mets. "We can't do enough for these tobacco-spitting millionaires," says the mayor. "It was this, or squander the money on schools and subways."
Times Square B.I.D. marks 100th Ped-lock day of the year as Ohio family is carried seven blocks, pressed between bodies of strangers. "Our feet never touched the ground! Can we go again?"
Deepening its commitment to public-private partnerships, the city opens bidding for corporate logos to be tattooed on foreheads of teachers, police and firefighters.
Public restrooms finally appear on Manhattan streets. No, wait, hang on… no, they don't.
The two top federal prosecutors in New York City soon may be pondering their next career moves, especially if voters put a Democrat in the White House. If tradition holds, the incoming administration will replace most of the nation's U. S. attorneys, who are political appointees, with those of its own choosing. And with the Justice Department still reeling from allegations of improper hirings and firings under the Bush administration, critics say it may be time to reconsider how the head prosecutors are selected.
The U. S. attorneys in New York City are Michael J. Garcia in the Southern District, which includes Manhattan, The Bronx and Dutchess, Rockland, Orange, Putman, Sullivan and Westchester counties, and Benton Campbell in the Eastern District, which includes Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Suffolk and Nassau counties. They are two of the Justice Department's 93 chief federal prosecutors.
Garcia, appointed by President George W. Bush, took the helm in 2005 after serving as head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the Department of Homeland Security. Campbell, a former assistant deputy attorney general, was appointed U. S. attorney for the Eastern District about a year ago. Both men had extensive experience as federal prosecutors in their districts before their appointments.
U. S. attorneys prosecute criminal cases like racketeering, bank fraud and terrorism, and represent the United States in civil suits. They oversee sometimes large staffs of assistant U. S. attorneys, so-called "career prosecutors"-- civil servants who are not affected by a change in the administration. In contrast, the U. S. attorneys are appointed by the president, serve at the president's discretion, and generally leave when the president does.
"You know when you take the job that it's a political appointment and there will be an end to it," said Mary Jo White, a former U. S. attorney for the Southern District who is now in private practice in New York. Usually the incoming administration allows several months for an orderly transition, White said, in order to minimize disruption to ongoing cases.
But not always. When Bill Clinton was elected, he reportedly sent word that the U. S attorneys were expected to resign "immediately or as soon as they could." White, who was appointed by George H. W. Bush, was one of the exceptions. The new administration asked her to stay on for another year because she had hands-on involvement in the prosecution of some high-profile terrorism cases, including those arising from the bombings of the U. S. embassies in East Africa.
Politics plays an essential role in the appointment of a U. S attorney. Traditionally, a candidate is first recommended by that person's home-state senior senator-if the senator belongs to the president's political party. If both senators from that state are from the opposition party, the choice falls to the senior state official of the president's party. Once the White House approves the candidate and makes the official nomination, the same home-state senator plays a key role in securing Senate confirmation.
In 2005, it fell to Gov. George Pataki, a Republican, to recommend Garcia for the Southern District post, because there was no Republican senator from New York. The Senate then confirmed Garcia. In the Eastern District, the Justice Department appointed Campbell on an interim basis, and he was later sworn in as U. S. Attorney, although Senate confirmation is still pending.
The appointment system has come under fire several times in the last half-century. State and local bar associations sometimes raise an outcry about a particular nomination, when they view the candidate as unqualified due to a lack of experience. More recently, it was revealed that the Bush White House had routinely screened candidates to see if they had political ideologies in line with the administration's policies. And last year, a congressional probe found that partisan politics fueled the firings of nine U. S. attorneys in 2006. Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed a special prosecutor in Septembre to look into whether there was any criminal behavior in the firings.
"There's a morale issue in the U. S. attorneys' offices," said Timothy J. Heaphy, a former assistant U. S. attorney in the District of Columbia and Western Virginia. "The politicization has discouraged the people who work there." In an October essay in Legal Times, Heaphy called for another look at a merit-based selection system to "help remove the taint of politicization and restore Justice's reputation for independence."
Merit selection was first proposed by then-presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in 1976. Under the plan, each state would have an independent nominating commission to solicit, screen and recommend applicants to the home-state senator based on the candidate's qualifications rather than political connections.
"Carter couldn't really sell that," Heaphy said. "The Senate predictably didn't want to give up their almost exclusive power to appoint those people." Now, however, with the Justice Department operating under a cloud of suspicion, Heaphy says the time may be right for a renewed discussion about reform.
Even without a merit selection system, the U.S. attorney's offices in New York City have a reputation for being largely above the taint of political patronage and favoritism. Many of the cases tried by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and Brooklyn have made headlines-if not history. Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried in the Southern District, as were Ivan Boesky, Michael Milkin, Martha Stewart and many mob bosses. The Eastern District office was responsible for convicting John Gotti, as well as defendants in the Abscam political corruption case, the Zakharov spy case and the Abner Louima police torture case.
Of the two offices, the Southern District is larger, with around 220 attorneys compared with about 160 in the Eastern District. A white-collar criminal defense attorney in New York, Marc Mukasey, calls the Southern District "the best of the best."
"It's the Top Gun school for federal prosecutors," said Mukasey, a former assistant U.S. attorney and the son of Attorney General Michael Mukasey. "It's the busiest office, with the greatest tradition, the highest standards, and it takes in the most demanding work."
"The Southern district continues to be one of the most important federal U. S. attorney's office in the United States," said Otto Obermaier, who headed the office from 1989 to1993 under President George H. W. Bush. In addition to the large volume of high profile cases, he said, the district has historically been able to attract a wealth of legal talent. Manhattan federal prosecutors have gone on to become federal judges, secretaries of state, and even mayor of New York City. Two assistant U. S. attorneys - Felix Frankfurter and John Marshall Harlan II--became justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.
"It has always had exceptionally talented people. While the U.S. attorney can be and often is a political appointment, the tradition of the office itself compels the appointment of extremely talented assistants." Obermaier said. "Being U.S. attorney in the Southern district is kind of like being the musical director to the New York Philharmonic. It's great you can get up there and wave the baton around, but it helps to have extraordinarily talented musicians."
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In the wake of another construction fatality last week, the City Council passed three bills Thursday aimed at increasing safety at building sites with cranes, including increasing coordination between operators and engineers and limiting the use of nylon straps.
The council also approved legislation prohibiting individuals from climbing or basejumping off of buildings.
At approximately 9:30 a.m. Thursday, a 48-year-old construction worker plummeted 40 stories to his death. He fell from the platform of a crane, where his harness was not properly secured.
That afternoon, the council unanimously approved three bills – part of a package of proposals introduced following two fatal crane accidents earlier this year. Most of the other measures have already been passed.
Thursday's accident was the third in six months. City officials suspended the license for the site's master rigger after an investigation found he had not supervised the crane operation.
The bills come as the city buildings department continues to be under intense scrutiny. Council Speaker Christine Quinn said the legilsation is not meant to restrict development but to enhance safety.
"Yes, we want development to happen in New York," said Quinn. "But we're not going to compromise safety."
The first bill (Intro 796 ) requires an engineer or rigger draft a plan for the crane's operation and submit it to the city's Department of Buildings. It also requires pre-jump safety meetings, which the department must be notified of at least 48 hours beforehand.
Another bill (Intro 794) requires crane operators take a 30-hour training course at least every five years. The final bill ( Intro 795) will restrict the use of nylon strings to hold cranes in place. A crane accident in March, which killed seven people, could have been caused by the failure of nylon straps.
In early June, two men in one day – one a skilled climber, another reportedly raising awareness for malaria – scaled the New York Times building.
The incident caught the attention of one member of the City Council, who introduced legislation (Intro 721) that would make it easier to prosecute people who try similar stunts. Councilmember Peter Vallone said that previously prosecutors had to prove the climber recklessly endangered the public. Now, he said, just climbing, jumping or suspending oneself from any structure will be illegal.
“Clearly, we don’t want our city to continue to be Disneyland for daredevils,” said Vallone.
Anyone found guilty could face one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. The bill was approved by a vote of 48 to 1, with Councilmember Helen Sears voting no.
Legislation to boost training on elder abuse for nonprofits that contract with the Department for the Aging was unanimously approved by the City Council.
The bill (Intro 737 ) requires the department develop training programs on detecting and eliminating elder abuse. The service groups will have to be trained every three years and hold at least two educational sessions annually. Â
After Rashawn Handsome of Brooklyn was arrested for keeping three handguns in a sneaker box in his apartment -- without any license for them -- his Legal Aid attorney argued that Handsome had a right to bear arms under the Second Amendment of the Constitution. As we reported last year, a Criminal Court judge emphatically disagreed. The guarantee of the right to bear arms, Judge Michael Gerstein said, referred to state militias. No one, the judge reasoned, intended for every individual to "own firearms for their private, civilian use."
But now the Supreme Court has spoken on this issue -- in a case involving the District of Columbia's restrictions on guns. Could Handsome and his Legal Aid Society attorney have been right?
Exactly what the Second Amendment means has been debated for years -- centuries, actually. This summer the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of District of Columbia v Heller, addressed the question for the first time. According to five of the nine justices, the words, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed," means that individuals have a right to possess weapons. The amendment, the court held, is not limited to states providing weapons to militias or, in modern times, the National Guard.
In light of that opinion, New York City cases that were held in abeyance must now be decided.
The Washington, D.C. and the New York state and city laws are quite different. Washington's laws, considered the strictest in the country, totally banned handgun possession and did not allow for the lawful registration of weapons. New York, on the other hand, permits gun ownership provided the individual wanting a gun obtains a license first.
New York's current requirements for a license are "good moral character" and that there be "no good cause" for denial. For the even more elusive right to obtain a "carry permit," which enables the owner to have the gun outside the home or business, "proper cause" must be established.
Defense lawyers have already challenged these restrictions in criminal cases where their clients have been arrested for possession of guns. These criminal defense lawyers argue that the New York laws are unconstitutional and therefore the charges must be dismissed. While lower criminal courts will continue to uphold city and state restrictions, those decisions will be appealed. It is considered unlikely that the appellate courts will find the licensing requirements unreasonable or unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court clearly said that the Second Amendment is not an unlimited right, and that conditions and qualifications, including a licensing law, could be imposed if they were not enforced "arbitrarily and capriciously." In other words, the justices expressly upheld both the ability of individuals to possess guns and licensing.
Richard M. Aborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City and a gun control advocate, calls the decision, "a victory." It "validates that the Second Amendment is not a barrier to laws we need, such as licensing, registration, safety training," Aborn, a former prosecutor and candidate for Manhattan district attorney, said. "The issue is about keeping guns out of the hands of bad guys."
The court, however, clearly determined that an outright ban "amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of 'arms' that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose." Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said, "Handguns are the most popular weapons chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid."
"We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country," the justices said, "but when it comes to an absolute prohibition of handguns kept and used for self defense in the home ... [such] policy choices [are] off the table."
This concerns some gun control advocates. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence issued a statement saying, "After the Heller ruling as before, approximately 80 Americans will continue to die from guns every day. Our weak or nonexistent gun laws contribute to the thousands of senseless gun deaths and injuries in this country every year. We must continue to fight for sensible gun laws to help protect our families and our communities."
Motions filed by the Legal Aid Society in a variety of gun cases claim that the licensing process and the difficulty of obtaining licenses amount to a complete ban on the ability to legally possess firearms, which, under the Heller case would be unconstitutional. The standards that a person be of "good moral character" and that "no good cause" exist for the denial are, defense lawyers maintain, flawed, vague, and insufficient.
Despite that, the argument that there is an absolute, unrestricted constitutional right to possess weapons of any type, at any place and by any person, is not expected to succeed in any court or even be raised. Constitutional amendments, including the second, may be subject to some restrictions. For example, the First Amendment guarantees the right to freedom of speech, but "not a right to falsely yell fire in a crowded theater." These are not absolutes.
In the Heller decision, the Supreme Court expressly approved certain categories of denial used in New York including those applying to individuals who have a felony record or a mental health disability. It is considered unlikely that a license would be granted to anyone who has ever been arrested, lives with anyone with a criminal record or uses controlled substances. In the meantime, the National Rifle Association is planning its attacks, which will involve civil law suits, on various state laws. New York is not on its list.
Challenges to pending cases and future arrests involving firearms will be the subject of litigation for years before the constitutionality of New York's laws is decided. There could well be more trips to the Supreme Court. The court said as much: "Since this case represents this Court's first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment, one should not expect it to clarify the entire field."
Emily Jane Goodman is a New York State Supreme Court JusticeÂ
The buildings department just might be Mayor Michael Bloomberg's brooding, dark shadow -- he can't seem to escape the destruction that plagues it.
Already in the first six months of 2008 the city has seen more fatalities at construction sites, 15 to be exact, than it did in all of 2007, Bloomberg said at a press conference last week. Just two days after that press conference, the city's top crane inspector was accused of taking bribes to allow cranes to pass inspection.
Although the mayor is credited with reworking the Department of Buildings -- within the past six years the number of inspectors has climbed 66 percent -- the fatalities have brought the department's alleged dysfunction back to the fore.
Even industry professionals, some of whom balked at additional reforms to the department after an exhaustive review of the building code earlier in the Bloomberg administration, have come around, saying that two crane accidents in three months calls for serious change.
Last week Bloomberg, with members of the City Council and the acting buildings commissioner, Robert D. LiMandri, tried again. A package of more than a dozen legislative proposals -- some of which were introduced at the City Council following the first accident in March -- was announced in an attempt to promote safety as the city continues to experience a building boom.
Industry professionals and observers have already debated those proposals, which range from crane safety to the qualifications of the buildings commissioner. But more dialogue is sure to come.
Since the city's first crane accident this year, there have been eight bills introduced at the City Council regarding construction site safety. Some of them were included in the package the mayor revealed last week.
The legislation intends to enhance safety at construction sites, but not halt construction, said Bloomberg. While safety is the city's first priority, the city will continue constructing skyscrapers and transit hubs.
"Our priority is not to balance two competing forces: economic development and safety," the mayor said. "It is, it has to be, safety -- safety of construction workers, safety of the public. No compromises and no excuses."
A key part of that effort, city officials said, is a revision of how the city tracks general contractors. In addition to the building permits contractors must obtain for each site, the city would now require every contractor to register for a safety control number, which would allow the department to track contractors across sites, including by who their principals are. That way, if one developer is an officer at several general contractors, the city can determine, the safety records of all of them. This step, officials said, will force contractors to embrace safety practices, instead of treating city violations and fines as a cost of doing business.
The city could also require contractors to keep concrete safety managers on site to ensure compliance with city regulations. The city's new building code mandates a similar position for demolition and high-rise construction. Bloomberg said 60 percent of all construction incidents involving falling debris in 2007 occurred during concrete operations.
One bill included in the mayor's proposal (Intro 763), which was introduced by Councilmember Annabel Palma in April, would classify "housekeeping" violations at construction sites, like tripping hazards or inadequate safety netting, immediately hazardous violations -- a type of violation which can carry fines as high as $25,000.
This package would also assign independent safety monitors to sites that have poor safety records. The monitors would be hired under contract by the city, and a general contractor would have to reimburse the department for the monitor's cost before the building received a certificate of occupancy. This proposal was adapted from a bill (Intro 760) introduced by Councilmember Jessica Lappin, whose district includes both crane accident sites, in April .
For crane safety, the city will require a safety meeting before any jumping, erecting or dismantling of equipment with the site safety manager, the crane engineer and any other responsible parties. The city will also require more intensive training for crane operators and restrict the use of nylon slings, which were a cause of the March accident. Bloomberg also said the city would roll out more proposals specifically pertaining to the operation of cranes in the coming weeks and months.
In addition to these proposals, the city would also mandate the following:
These are not the first steps the Bloomberg administration has taken following the fatalities in March .
Since the first accident on March 15, when a crane collapsed into a townhouse and killed seven people, the city has provided the Department of Buildings with $4 million to equip 20 specialized engineers for a citywide analysis of construction site safety.
Bloomberg also required crane inspectors to oversee sites whenever a crane jumped -- that requirement was scaled back a day before the city's second crane accident in May.
Despite these efforts, the city still has received some criticism. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer expressed support for the mayor's proposals last week but also warned that the department did not have enough resources, employees or know-how to see them through.
"We need to know when it's going to happen, who is doing the work, how is it going to get done and we need to get it done now," said Stringer in a prepared statement. "We are piling all of this onto one agency. We must involve multiple agencies or I fear we will not be able to accomplish these goals."
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, whose district includes parts of Queens and Manhattan, called for the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration to inspect all of the city's construction sites. The mayor balked at that idea.
As some of the latest proposals were introduced at the City Council last month, some industry professionals suggested the city would be better off doing away with the buildings department and remaking it into a public corporation to oversee construction sites. But since the latest fatalities on May 30, several of the city's most powerful groups have reversed that position.
"It's no secret that we raised some issues, but working over the past two weeks we have resolved just about all those issues," said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. "This is a package that will generate additional training, it will require accountability by us in the private sector and, when necessary, it will add additional professional oversight by the proper people." Â
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It’s an experiment that has arguably run its course.
In the last 20 years, states across the country have quadrupled their spending on jails and prisons from $11 billion in 1987 to $44 billion last year, while imprisoning 2.3 million individuals – or one in 100 American adults, according to a report released by the Pew Center on the States. While some criminologists give incarceration partial credit for cutting crime in the 1990s, many argue that these public safety benefits are evaporating and that money for jails would be better spent in other areas such as health care and education.
Among policymakers and experienced corrections officials, there is a palpable sense of optimism that the political will exists to tackle the issue of mass imprisonment. To them, the Pew Center report’s eye-catching title, "One in 100," has helped focus a long-running debate about the fiscal and human costs of incarcerating so many Americans for so many years. "The report is engaging people who are normally not part of the conversation," said New York City’s Probation and Corrections Commissioner Martin Horn. "I think it’s created a real opportunity."
Even conservative states like Kansas and Texas are beginning to embrace prison reform, with legislators from both sides of the aisle coming together to make change. "There is a growing realization around the country that we can’t build our way out of the crime problem with more prisons," said Adam Gelb, one of the authors of the Pew report.
For New Yorkers this shift in attitude poses a number of questions. How will the state respond? Will it close the prisons that now play such a major role in the upstate economy? And, if the state does realize savings on prisons, how could that money best be used to further reduce crime?
New York is exhibit number one for reformers who seek to reassure citizens that it is possible to cut crime and incarceration rates at the same time. Virtually alone among states, New York has seen the number of inmates in its prisons decline over the past decade. It has 9,000 fewer state prison inmates than it did 10 years ago, a 12 percent decrease, as crime rates have continued to drop. By the end of 2007, there were a total of 62,260 individuals in state prison. At the same time, the number of people held in New York City jails awaiting trial or imprisoned for a short period shrank from a high of 23,000 in 1993 to just over 13,000 in 2007.
These sharp drops have been driven largely by the city’s plunging felony arrest rate. Violent crime in New York City declined by 75 percent between 1991 and 2004. The city now sends about 8,000 inmates each year to the state’s prison system, down from 20,000, according to Michael Jacobson, director of the Vera Institute of Justice and a nationally known expert on incarceration.
Other parts of the correctional system have seen similar declines. In New York City, the number of individuals under probation supervision dropped from 50,870 in 1998 to 45,844 in 2007. The population on parole dropped by 18 percent over the same period for the state as a whole, fueled entirely by a dramatic, 30 percent decline in the number of parolees under supervision in New York City. That translates to 24,756 parolees in New York City in 2007, down from 35,286 in 1998. Probation is a city program that supervises offenders as an alternative to prison or jail. Parole, which in New York is run by the state, supervises offenders after they are released from state prison.
This drop has helped relieve pressure on New York’s budget at a time when other states are grappling with exploding incarceration rates. For example, California spends $8.8 billion a year on corrections, a staggering 216 percent increase in inflation-adjusted dollars over the last 20 years and 8.8 percent of the state’s budget, according to the Pew Center. By contrast, New York spends $2.6 billion on corrections, or 5.1 percent of the budget.
Despite the decline in prisoners, though, New York has had mixed success in meeting another challenge posed by prison reformers: shutting prisons and re-allocating the money spent on them to other uses, such as providing drug treatment, job training and other services to recently released prisoners.
If anything, the process of closing prisons has gotten harder, not easier, in recent years. For example, in 2006 the state legislature passed a bill requiring that employees must receive a year's notice before any prison can be closed.
Then in April Gov. David Patterson quietly withdrew his predecessor's plan to close four upstate prisons. The move would have saved taxpayers $70 million over the next two years, but was shelved in the face of objections from state Senate Republicans, many of whom represent upstate communities where the prisons are located.
The prison system is a $2.7 billion a year industry in New York State, concentrated in many upstate communities. As the economies of these areas have declined, the prisons have remained a source of jobs, income and people. While about two thirds of the prisoners in the state are from New York City, the U.S. Census counts themas residents of the place where they are incarcerated. This boosts the populations of many rural communities, giving them more votes in the legislature than they might otherwise have, along with other benefits.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer had attempted to neutralize political objections to prison closures by proposing that a state commission look into the issue in 2007. Modeled after the federal government's successful effort to shut excess military bases, the idea was the panel would present the legislature with a comprehensive plan that would be difficult to oppose.
The legislature, though, blocked that effort. Spitzer then turned to his state Department of Correctional Services. After what department spokesperson Erik Kriss has described as a "thorough internal review," officials proposed closing a medium security prison, the Hudson Correctional Facility in Columbia County, as well as three minimum security facilities. The department had even begun to transfer "a few dozen" employees out of the facilities slated for closure.
That was clearly premature. When the state budget was announced in April, it restored full funding for all four.
Advocates responded with outrage. "It’s really a jobs program for economically depressed communities," Robert Gangi, the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, told the New York Times. Gangi holds out hope that Patterson will fight for prison closures in the future. He notes that Patterson has a record of opposing mass incarceration and was even arrested at a demonstration protesting the state's harsh drug laws in 2002. "Maybe [Patterson] will return to it when he gets his sea legs under him," said Gangi.
The failure to close state prisons is a blow to state officials who hoped to use the savings to comply with tighter supervision standards for sex offenders, introduced by the legislature in 2006. It also gives the state less flexibility to help re-invigorate parts of the correctional system, like parole and probation, which have long suffered from neglect and under funding.
Advocates are particularly interested in transferring money from prisons to parole, which they see as key to reducing incarceration rates and increasing public safety. Improving parole would have a kind of domino effect: Better supervision of released offenders would reduce the number of offenders who go back to prison, thereby further diminishing the need for prisons, which in turn would free up more money for parole.
In recent years, however, parole officials have had to fend off challenges to the institution’s basic legitimacy. In 2005, the Urban Institute released a report, entitled http://www.urban.org/publications/311156.html "Does Parole Work?" It found that parole had little to no effect on re-arrest rates among offenders. After controlling for demographics and differences in criminal histories, the researchers found little difference between offenders released from prison with no conditions and those released under parole supervision. Roughly 60 percent of offenders in each group were re-arrested within two years. Some groups, such as white males with histories of violence and a long arrest records, actually fared worse under parole supervision than when they were released unconditionally.
In addition, observers credit -- or blame -- parole for helping to fuel the country’s prison boom. Put simply, in many states, parole provides the reason to put many released convicts back in jail. Studies show that about a quarter of all released offenders are re-incarcerated within three years of their release on so-called "technical violations" of their parole, such as failing a drug test or missing a curfew, as opposed to a new arrest.
In some states like California, the problem is particularly acute: According to Michael Jacobson, the state sends three quarters of its parole population back to jail every year for technical violations. In 2001, close to 15 percent of parolees were returned to jail in New York for technical violations, although that accounted for a large share (about one third) of all new prison admissions.
As Jacobson and others describe it, over-taxed parole officers return parolees to jail for minor infractions in an effort to manage caseloads that average 65 or more. The irony is that the parole system, one of the government’s most poorly funded functions, has essentially unchecked authority to authorize millions of dollars of government expenditures by citing offender for violations, guaranteeing their return to jail and the need for more prisons.
Some of parole’s toughest critics are system insiders such as Horn, the former executive director of New York’s Division of Parole. In a 2001 article in Corrections Management Quarterly, Horn called for "ending parole as we know it." He proposed replacing it with vouchers that would allow parolees to purchase needed services like drug treatment, job training or housing on their own. Before being released to the community, inmates would be placed in halfway houses to ease their reentry into society. The role of parole would shift from surveillance to supporting inmates and helping to link them to services. "I’m more convinced than ever that this is the right way to go," said Horn.
Other prominent correctional reformers, such as Jacobson and Jeremy Travis, the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, argue that it would be politically difficult to win support for any plan, like Horn's, that does away with post prison supervision of offenders. Instead, Travis favors transferring parole from the executive branch to the judicial branch. He would create "re-entry courts" in which judges would supervise the reentry process.
Jacobson focuses more directly on reforms to parole itself, which include allocating resources so that recently released parolees get the most attention, limiting the length of time that a person stays on parole and curtailing the use of technical violations.
What all these proposals share, however, is the urgent sense that parole in its current form simply does not work. "If almost any of the state parole systems were a Fortune 500 company, the CEO would take one look at it and shut it down," Jacobson writes.
Here again, New York looks pretty good – at least in comparison to other states.
Although New York City’s plummeting crime rate gets most of the credit for the state’s declining incarceration population, some modest changes in correctional policy have had an impact as well. Some state prisoners are eligible for early release if they complete a so-called "shock incarceration" program that includes six months of hard labor. According to the state Department of Correctional Services, the program, in operation since 1987, has saved $1.18 billion in prison costs by granting over 36,000 participants a release an average of 345 days early.
Small changes to the state’s Rockefeller Drug Laws, enacted by the state legislature in 2004, have resulted in the early release of about 3,000 individuals, according to the New York State Criminal Justice 2007 Crimestat Report. Finally, in April, four state agencies, including the Division of Parole, launched a new drug treatment center in Harlem aimed at reducing the rate at which parolees, including those who fail a drug test or commit other technical violations, return to prison.
Perhaps most importantly, New York City offers a number of resources for the 15,000 parolees who returned home in 2007. Well-respected non-profit organizations like the Center for Employment Opportunities], the Fortune Society, the Women’s Prison Association and Family Justice all work with this population.
For example, the Center for Employment Opportunities provides short-term paid jobs and other services to about 2,000 parolees every year. Participants spend about eight weeks painting classrooms on college campuses, mopping courthouse floors or filling other temporary positions. After finishing these paid internships, job experts work to match participants to permanent jobs. The goal is to help released inmates manage the transition from incarceration to paid work.
"We feel strongly that a person coming home needs more than help than just creating a resume," said Marta Nelson, the director of policy and planning. "They need someone who can connect them to an employer." The program has cut re-incarceration rates among parolees by almost half, but only for individuals who begin the program within three months of their release. This finding mirrors national research that shows the importance of linking parolees to services immediately.
Despite these signs of success, New York is subject to the same difficult policy and practical challenges faced all over the country. "Parole is hard," said Horn. "It really gets deep into social and psychological factors [of parolees], and operates in a world where there are so many factors outside of its control."
For now, one of those factors seems to be New York State's commitment to spending hundreds of millions of dollars on prisons -- even without the prisoners to fill them.
Aubrey Fox is project director of Bronx Community Solutions, aimed at changing the Bronx court system’s approach to low-level crime.
Over the past few years, New York City has undertaken an impressive transformation of its juvenile justice system. Breaking from the policies of the previous mayor, the Bloomberg administration has embraced the notion that providing children with community-based services and support instead of sending them to jail or prison is a cheaper, more effective approach to reducing youth crime and recidivism.
In the last two years, the city has joined with a number of non-profit organizations to create a network of alternatives to incarceration for children under the age of 16 involved in the court system. These new community-based options have led to a marked decrease in the number of children incarcerated in city detention centers and state-run prisons.
However, these reforms are not enough.
The city must change policies and practices to reduce the glaring disparities in arrest, prosecution and incarceration of youth of color. New York City must take the necessary next step in restructuring the system by developing a long-term plan to reduce detention capacity and redirect resources from juvenile jails to effective community-based programs. Closing pre-trial detention centers is the only way for the city to realize the savings from its increased use of community alternatives and to continue its progress in reducing youth incarceration.
In the 1990s, the city’s juvenile justice system relied heavily on incarcerating young people before they went to trial. Faced with a lack of community options and a punitive political climate, Family Court judges routinely placed children in juvenile detention centers while they awaited trial for misdemeanors and other non-violent delinquency charges. Because the city was locking up children charged with minor offenses, the detention population increased by 60 percent from 1993 to 2000, even as youth crime and arrests markedly decreased.
One of the most troubling aspects of the spike in youth incarceration was the disproportionate impact it had on African American and Latino youth. During the 1990s, over 95 percent of young people in city detention centers were African American or Latino. This continues to be the case today.
In response to the rising detention population, the city Department of Juvenile Justice in 1998 opened two new youth jails, the Crossroads center in Brownsville and the Horizons in the South Bronx, and jettisoned a plan to shut down the notorious Spofford detention center in the Hunts Point neighborhood in the Bronx. By 2000, however, the department was running out of space in these three secure juvenile detention centers. Despite the fact that that the majority of detained children had been arrested for non-violent offenses, city officials did not even consider developing community-based programs.
Five years later and following the change in administrations, the mayor’s office implemented a range of community-based alternatives to detention for children charged in Family Court for delinquency offenses, such as graffiti, theft or fighting in school. The city partnered with a non-profit organization in each borough to operate community monitoring and after-school reporting centers. Notably, between 2005 and 2007, the number of court admissions to Department of Juvenile Justice facilities decreased by 16 percent.
In addition to new community programs that have reduced the use of pre-trial detention in the city, the Bloomberg administration has created other alternative-to-incarceration programs that have significantly decreased the number of children sent to upstate facilities operated by the State Office of Children and Family Services. These alternative programs have recidivism rates of between 18 and 35 percent, considerably lower than the nearly 80 percent recidivism rate for youth released from state facilities.
As a result of the new alternative-to-incarceration programs, the number of children incarcerated in state and private facilities dropped by 68 percent between 2000 and 2008. Recognizing that this dramatic population decline presented a significant opportunity to realign agency resources, children and family services commissioner Gladys Carrion proposed closing six facilities, a move that would generate $16 million a year in savings. After much negotiation, the state legislature ultimately approved shutting four facilities in its fiscal year 2009 budget.
New York City should look to the state’s example of how political will and leadership can close costly and ineffective facilities.
A December 2007 report from the city's Independent Budget Office revealed the staggering costs of pretrial youth detention in New York City: an estimated $84 million a year -- a 42 percent increase in just five years. It costs an average of $594 to provide secure detention for one juvenile for one day. On an annualized basis, the city spends over $216,000 to incarcerate a child in a secure detention facility. The report found that the average secure detention stay of 50 days costs the city about $30,000 per child. In contrast, the city spends around $1,300 on average to supervise one child in an alternative-to-detention program for up to two months.
As the city diverts more young people from jails, policymakers should seek to downsize the city’s inefficient and wasteful detention system. The city will not save money by diverting youth from detention unless it cuts detention capacity – either by reducing beds or shutting down entire facilities. Otherwise, every year, the city will spend more - not less - on detention.
The cost to operate detention centers is fixed. That means that, even though there may be fewer residents of each facility, it costs no less to run it. Instead the expense of running these extraordinarily expensive facilities is spread over a smaller population. As a result, the number of children in detention has decreased while the per diem cost to incarcerate youth has increased. The most sensible way for the city to reduce capacity is to honor its long-standing commitment to close the Spofford detention center.
Most importantly, reducing detention capacity will prevent the juvenile justice system from finding new ways to keep locking up young people of color. As the number of court admissions to detention decreased last year, there was a marked increase in the number of police admissions – children who the police brought directly to detention because the court was closed and the police could not contact a parent or guardian.
This year, just as the city has taken steps to reduce police admissions, the number of readmissions to detention has started to increase. Notably, the one constant trend has been that virtually all of those detained are African American and Latino children from under-resourced and over-policed schools and neighborhoods.
The state has a role here as well. It should enact legislation called Re-Direct New York, which would provide state reimbursement for alternatives to incarceration. It would be modeled after the successful state reimbursement plan for community programs that work to keep young people out of the foster care system. State reimbursements could also support alternatives to juvenile court, such as neighborhood youth courts and mediation programs as well as aftercare services for young people returning home from jail or prison.
The city should also develop a comprehensive plan to dismantle the “cradle to prison pipeline” for New York City’s African American and Latino children living in poverty. The vast majority of children of color in the juvenile justice system have been failed by other public systems – particularly the education, child welfare and mental health systems.
A collaborative effort between public officials and community groups can help to dismantle this pipeline by redistributing detention dollars to create quality schools, community-based mental heath services, family support programs and other neighborhood-based efforts that offer long-term help for vulnerable children and their families.
Mishi Faruqee is the director of the youth justice program at the Children's Defense Fund
Last year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged the most sweeping reform in decades to the City’s juvenile justice system which would reduce the average length of stay in detention, create alternatives to detention and placement for youth, assist young people leaving detention with re-entry into their home communities; and engage families in addressing mental health issues by ensuring uninterrupted service delivery upon release.
That reform effort has already yielded significant results. The success of the overall reform effort has resulted in a decrease in detention population levels, with the population in Non-Secure Detention group homes declining by 13.4 percent and in Secure Detention by 1.7 percent from July 2007 through March 2008.
These successes have enabled Department of Juvenile Justice to reduce capacity, cutting annual costs to taxpayers by $1.8 million.
A series of innovation programs have contributed to this.
Collaborative Family Initiative
Launched in February 2007, the Collaborative Family Initiative provides juveniles who are in need of mental health support with continuing, uninterrupted services upon release.
Nationwide, youth with mental health service needs are overrepresented in juvenile justice and child welfare systems. Of the more than 600,000 youth processed through juvenile detention centers each year, 70 percent suffer from mental health disorders. In New York City, youth with mental health issues comprise 82 percent of all juveniles in detention. On average, young people needing mental health service stay in detention twice as long as unaffected youth and are more likely to be incarcerated.
The initiative links these young people and their families to community-based providers, ensuring that after release they continue to receive critical mental health and psychiatry services in their neighborhoods without interruption or delay. The young people are enrolled in the program while still in detention so that upon release from custody, the youth receive immediate psychiatry and/or mental health services free-of-charge through community-based not-for-profit providers. Their families receive supportive counseling, direct mental health services if they have an unmet need, and additional referrals as necessary. The city pays for services to the young people for the first 90 days following release.
Participation in the Collaborative Family Initiative also has helped reduce the average length of stay in detention for youth with mental health and psychiatric needs. According to an interim report on the initiative issued May 23 by John Jay College and the Department of Juvenile Justice, 81 percent of youth released during the initial phase of the program remained with their families and were not re-arrested on new charges during the post-release period.
Risk Assessment
In another effort to ensure that the city keeps in custody only those youth that need to be detained, the department will factor in the results of the new Risk Assessment Instrument into its decisions about releasing youth to their families. The instrument was created by the Vera Institute of Justice in conjunction with the Criminal Justice Coordinator’s Office and other juvenile justice stakeholders.
Before a youth's case concludes, the tool assesses the probability of the youth returning to court and the likelihood of re-arrest. The Risk Assessment Instrument is a proven approach that has yielded significant results in other jurisdictions where it has been adopted, including Multnomah County, Ore.; Santa Clara County, Calif; Cook County, Ill.; and the State of Virginia. The risk assessment complements the Release to Parent initiative, implemented in October 2007, that enables the department to discharge those youth arrested on nights, weekends and holidays, who do not pose a serious risk to public safety.
Re-entry Supports Program
The juvenile justice system and the Family Court process can be complex and intimidating to youth and their families. Little comprehensive information on juvenile justice processing exists, and much of it involves abstract legal concepts. As a result, young people and their parents or guardians sometimes feel that they lack any kind of meaningful influence over the outcome of their case and may decide against actively participating in the adjudication process. This can result in young people remaining in detention when they simply don’t have to.
To address this, the department recently established the Re-entry Supports Program, in partnership with John Jay College, to familiarize youth and families with early-release options and to formulate tools to help young people re-entering their communities better understand and navigate the juvenile justice system and connect with local resources.
The Re-entry Supports Program will provide every resident of a detention facility with easy-to-understand information about the court process, hearings and how to act in court. Every family with a young person in detention also will receive instruction, through multi-media, a multi-lingual court guide, and Internet tool, on parental involvement and navigating the court process.
LIFE Transition Program
As part of the mayor's effort to reduce poverty in the city, the Department of Juvenile Justice’s LIFE Transitions Program targets young people with school attendance issues or performing below grade level in an effort to get them back in school. It also promotes early career exploration. The LIFE Transitions Program, which includes juvenile offenders whose cases are processed before the adult courts, is a significant investment in youth who are considered likely to enter state detention facilities. The program prepares them for transition back to their communities and enables them to continue working with the same community-based organizations upon release from detention.
The Next Steps
Given the success of the overall reform effort in reducing the demand for Non-Secure Detention group homes, the department will close two of these facilities in the city’s next fiscal year, which begins July 1. Despite citywide budget reductions, the administration has expressed its commitment to the Collaborative Family Initiative by ensuring its continued funding through fiscal 2009.
While the reforms and the results they have produced so far are compelling, simply sustaining these programs is not enough. We can and must do more for our families and our young people by investing in programs that reduce the use of detention while still ensuring public safety, and that offer the promise of more positive and meaningful outcomes for juveniles. In the last decade, New York City’s juvenile justice system has evolved from one focused on custody and security to one that promotes public safety, addresses risk factors, including mental health and poverty, and serves the needs of youth. At the same time, it strengthens families and communities.
The support of the public, including community and faith-based groups, is essential to continue these efforts and to ensure that critical services are sustained for youth and families. In addition, the department needs New York State to be an equal fiscal partner and the courts to continue this forward momentum and make certain that the goals identified in the mayor’s vision for juvenile justice reform are fully achieved.
Neil Hernandez is commissioner of the New York City Department of Juvenile Justice.
One percent of all American adults are now in prison or jail, the Pew Center on the States reported earlier this year. That's more than 2.3 million people. In New York alone, 62,260 adult spent their days behind bars at the end of last year. Out of every 100,000 New Yorkers, 482 were incarcerated.
While New York's incarceration rate may seem high, it falls in the lowest fifth of states, with a few -- Louisiana, Texas and Georgia -- incarcerating people at twice the rate of New York. (Louisiana imprisons 1,132 people for every 100,000 state residents.)
The current numbers for New York come at what maybe the end of a kind of prison boom in the state. In 1972, New York's prison population was at about a 20-year low. Then the state passed the Rockefeller drug laws, setting jail sentences of 15 years to life for selling relatively small amount of drugs. The prison population soared. During Gov. Mario Cuomo's first term -- from 1983 to 1987 -- the number of people in state prisons increased by some 10,000. In his 12 years in office, Cuomo would add more prison beds in New York than all the previous governors in state history combined, at a cost that would eventually reach about $7 billion, Eric Schlosser wrote in the Atlantic.
The state's prisoner population continued to climb, reaching 71,750 in 2000. Then, the numbers began to decline. Currently about 62,260 individuals are in state prisons.
Felony rates in the state have fallen dramatically, fueled by the large decreases in serious offenses in New York City. And in 2005, the state enacted some reforms in the Rockefeller drug laws. Finally, experts and even ordinary citizens have questioned whether mass incarceration has really increased public safety.
"Through the 1980s, policymakers abandoned the philosophy of rehabilitation. Keeping criminals off the streets and exacting retribution became the main goals of punishment," Harvard sociologist Bruce Western has written. But, according to Western, this approach can be self-defeating. "Incarceration reduces the yearly earnings of ex-prisoners by 40 percent and increases the risks of divorce and separation. A steady job and a good marriage provide pathways out of crime, but incarceration undermines these steps to an honest living," he said.
This week, we look at the changes in incarceration in New York, both among adults and under the city's juvenile justice system. Writers examine efforts to further reduce detention, of both adults and young people. Two articles -- one on health care on Rikers and the other on protecting particularly vulnerable juvenile inmates -- examine treatment of incarcerated people.
Cutting Prisons, Keeping Prisoners: Crime and the number of felons are down in New York, but the state continues to keep its prisons open, eating up money that could be used for drug treatment, better supervision of released offenders and improving parole.
Rating Health Care Behind Bars: The city recently renewed its contract with the company that provides health care on Riker's Island -- even though the provider has repeatedly failed to meet the city's own standards.
How to Reform Juvenile Justice: While applauding steps the city has made to improve its ways of dealing with young offenders, much remains to be done, an advocate writes. Now, she argues, the city must close detention facilities and reduce the glaring racial disparities in the system.
Keeping Young People out of Jail: In six years, New York City has greatly reduced the number of young offenders held in detention. The city's director of juvenile justice describes what's been done and what the administration plans to do next.
Protecting Vulnerable Youth: Young gays and lesbians frequently find themselves victims of discrimination and harassment, and the situation in correctional facilities can be even worse. A new state policy tries to address that. Also, making criminals pay -- more and more.
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