CJA
NEW YORK CITY CRIMINAL JUSTICE AGENCY
Jerome E. McElroy Executive Director
THE DAY CUSTODY PROGRAM: FIRST YEAR REPORT
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Project Director Freda F. Solomon, Ph.D. Senior Research Fellow
January 2008
52 Duane Street, New York, NY 10007 © 2008 NYC Criminal Justice Agency
(646) 213-2500
THE DAY CUSTODY PROGRAM: FIRST YEAR REPORT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY On September 22, 2005, the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services (CASES) began accepting defendants into its Day Custody Program (DCP), created in partnership with the New York City Department of Correction (DOC). DCP is a selective program requiring that cases and defendants meet a variety of criteria. It is designed as an alternative sentencing option for cases disposed at arraignment at the downtown Manhattan Criminal Court location in non-Spotlight targeted misdemeanor cases. Program eligibility requirements include that defendants have at least three prior misdemeanor convictions, and further requires consent to the program sentence by other court personnel including defense and prosecuting attorneys, judges, and the defendant him/herself. Through the end of September 2006, approximately the first full program year, CASES staff had screened the court papers in a total of 3,663 cases of which 548, or about 15% of all screened cases, received a DCP sentence. The program consists of an accountability component comparable to community service, needs assessment and early intervention programs, and discharge planning including referrals to community-based programs. These activities are provided in eight-hour daily sessions over three weekdays at a DOC facility adjacent to the downtown Manhattan courthouse. Defendants sentenced to the program have ten days in which to complete the three program days’ activities. However, unlike a traditional jail sentence, defendants are released at the end of each program day and must return of their own volition on subsequent days. Depending on the day and time of week at which the sentence is imposed some defendants commence their first program day immediately after sentencing while others need to begin program activities on another day. A court compliance date is scheduled fifteen days after sentencing at which time CASES reports on whether or not the defendant successfully completed the program. The DCP sentence is entered as an intermittent sentence of imprisonment with a jail sentence, usually of ten days, to be imposed for program failure. This study of the first program year of CASES’ Day Custody Program found that when a DCP sentence was imposed an overwhelming majority of defendants in the cases satisfactorily completed the program. In addition, appropriate penalties were assessed in the cases of defendants who failed to successfully complete the program and were returned to court. Rejected cases also were examined and there were overall differences found in the charge and severity composition between rejected cases convicted at arraignment and program-sentenced cases. These differences strongly suggested that sentenced cases would more likely have had jail sentences imposed, and of longer duration, than the rejected cases (excluding those Spotlight designated). The study also found that the Spotlight restriction was the largest source of program rejections, and sentencing practices at arraignment in the downtown Manhattan Criminal Court appear to affect the size of the program by restricting the number of defendants in non-Spotlight cases facing post-conviction jail time.
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An early assessment of recidivism indicated a lower prevalence and longer time to a new prosecuted arrest among the cases of successful program completers in comparison with the unsuccessful program defendants. But, if re-arrested there was no difference in the frequency of re-arrests between the two groups, at least in the short term. However, from the study data it was not possible to determine the extent to which, if any, the program had an effect on recidivism and this remains a subject for further research. KEY FINDINGS FROM THE STUDY There were 548 program-sentenced cases involving 525 defendants: 23 defendants each received a DCP sentence twice in the program’s first year. ► CASES’ selection criteria were met in almost 60% of the program-sentenced cases, and in only a small percentage of the cases were there defendants with insufficient numbers of prior misdemeanor convictions. ► Over a third of the cases were Spotlight targeted, although they represented only a very small percentage of all Spotlight cases in the same time period. (Spotlighttargeted cases can receive a program sentence if solicited by other court personnel, or in instances in which they may appear otherwise eligible because court papers are not properly stamped.) ► Defendants in program-sentenced cases were mostly male, minority, and 35years-of-age or older. Over 87% had more than the requisite three prior misdemeanor convictions, and almost 70% also had previously been convicted for a crime of felony severity. In addition, defendants in the program-sentenced cases were overwhelmingly rated by CJA as poor risks for recognizance release if the cases were continued past the arraignment appearance. ► At arrest over a third of the DCP-sentenced cases had a drug top arrest charge with almost another third a property-crime charge (mostly petit larceny). Most of the remaining cases had charges involving fraud crimes such as fare-evasion or forgery, or public disorder offenses such as criminal trespass. ► At arraignment the largest percentage of cases had a property-crime charge, slightly greater than prosecuted drug charges. This change is important because almost all convictions in DCP-sentenced cases were to the arraignment charge and crimes such as petit larceny tend to have a greater likelihood of jail time, and comparatively more of it, than almost all other types of misdemeanor charges. In addition, almost 91% of the DCP-sentenced cases had a conviction to a charge of Amisdemeanor severity. ► Defendants in over 81.2% of all of the first-year DCP-sentenced cases successfully completed the program requirements. Among program-eligible cases the successful completion rate was 86.8%; it was lower (71.6%) in cases identified by CJA from DCJS-provided files as having been Spotlight designated. There were 103 cases in which defendants were reported to the court as having not successfully completed the program’s requirements. In 61 cases defendants did not complete the program and in 42 cases defendants failed to appear at all.
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As of June 12, 2007, 94 of the 103 cases had been re-sentenced for the program failure, almost all having been returned after a new arrest. In almost all instances defendants were re-sentenced to an appropriate jail term for program failure. However, because re-sentencing frequently occurred in conjunction with a new case it was not possible to precisely determine the consequence for program failure in every case. There were 3,115 cases involving 2,665 defendants screened but not program sentenced. ► The characteristics of defendants in rejected cases closely resembled those in program-sentenced cases, and were fairly consistent regardless of the source or reason for rejection, although percentages among categories varied. ► Over 60% of all rejections were made by CASES staff, and a majority of these rejections (53.3%) were because of Spotlight designation. Parole (7.8%) and homeless/insufficient community ties (6.4%) were the next two largest reasons given by DCP staff for rejection. ► Defense attorneys and judges were the second and third largest source of rejections overall. ► Somewhat under two-thirds of all rejected cases were disposed at Criminal Court arraignment, almost all by conviction, and in almost three-fourths some form of jail sentence was imposed. However, in two thirds of these cases the jail sentence imposed was for less than 10 days including those with time-served sentences. (Comparatively longer sentences were imposed in Spotlight rejected cases than in cases in other rejection categories.) ► There were some variations in charge characteristics between program-rejected and program-sentenced cases both at arrest, and in the cases with arraignment convictions. However, because there were so many similarities in the defendant characteristics and case composition between program-sentenced and rejected cases, it was not possible from these data to provide guidance to CASES in ways to either change its targeting criteria or court-screening procedures. When DCP was created there was not an explicit goal of reducing recidivism within the target population, and the research design for the first year study did not include provision for examining this issue in a methodologically precise way. However, because of interest in this issue the report examined new prosecuted arrests within five months of the court compliance date for successful and unsuccessful program clients ► Overall, 59.4% of all DCP-sentenced defendants had a new prosecuted arrest within five months of their compliance date. The re-arrest was 54.2% among programeligible defendants and 71.1% among DCP-sentenced defendants in Spotlight-targeted arrests. Because there was no available data from cases and defendants with matching characteristics to those who received a DCP sentence, it is not possible to determine an expected re-arrest rate absent any program intervention. ► The re-arrest rate within five months was 56.2% among successful program completers: 52.2% among successful program completers who met the program’s eligibility requirements and 68.1% for successful program clients in Spotlight-targeted cases. Among defendants who did not successfully complete the program 73.5% had a
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prosecuted re-arrest within five months of the program failure: 67.5% for those who met the eligibility requirements and 78.2% for unsuccessful program clients in Spotlighttargeted cases. ► The average time to a first new prosecuted arrest was longer for successful program completers, 54.79 days, with a median (midpoint) of 43.5 days. The average time to a new prosecuted re-arrest was 36.09 days among unsuccessful program clients, with a median of 24.5 days. ► An examination of case and defendant characteristics between the successful and unsuccessful program completion groups found many differences. As a result, these DCP-sentenced groups were too dissimilar to form any inferences about the extent to which differences in their re-arrest rates may have been related to the DCP program. ► The examination of recidivism also found that if re-arrested there was no difference in the number of prosecuted re-arrests within the five-month interval between the defendants in the successful and unsuccessful completion groups.