Research Brief 36

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Research Brief

A series of reports summarizing current research from CJA

No. 36

January 2015 Executive Director, Jerome E. McElroy

Director, Research Dept., Richard R. Peterson, Ph.D. Research Brief Editor & Deputy Director, Research, Mary T. Phillips, Ph.D. Graphics & Production, Raymond P. Caligiure Administrative Associate, Annie Su

CJA is a not-for-profit corporation that provides a variety of criminal justice services under a contract with the City of New York. CJA staff interview defendants arrested in New York City, make recommendations for pretrial release, and notify released defendants of upcoming court dates. CJA also operates two supervised release programs for nonviolent felony clients in Queens and Manhattan. The Research Department conducts studies addressing a broad array of criminal justice policy concerns. The Research Brief series summarizes the results of some of these studies.

New York City Criminal Justice Agency, Inc. 52 Duane Street New York, NY 10007 PHONE: 646 213-2500 FAX: 646 213-2650 WEB: www.nycja.org

© 2015 NYC Criminal Justice Agency, Inc.

IMPACT OF THE QUEENS SUPERVISED RELEASE PROGRAM ON LEGAL OUTCOMES By Freda F. Solomon, Ph.D.

On August 3, 2009, CJA introduced an experimental pretrial community supervision program in Queens County. The program is designed to reduce unnecessary pretrial detention. It provides the Court with a release alternative to money bail for some defendants who do not pose a substantial risk of pretrial misconduct. The Queens Supervised Release (QSR) program is offered to judges at Criminal Court arraignment only in cases prosecuted for non-violent felony charges with a high likelihood of having bail set. In program-eligible cases, defendants must also satisfy a number of other conditions during a rigorous pre-arraignment screening process before the program can be offered for judicial consideration. In addition, defense attorneys serve as gatekeepers to ensure to the fullest extent possible that the program is offered only in cases in which defendants are the most likely to be held on bail leaving Criminal Court arraignment and not as an alternative to recognizance release. This study addressed the impact of community supervision on: • conviction rates • conviction charge severity • sentencing for convictions • case processing times To begin to assess the program’s impact on these outcomes, program cases were compared with those in a pre-program Queens data set having similar charge and defendant characteristics. This Research Brief is adapted from CJA’s Queens County Supervised Release Program: Impact on Court Processing and Outcomes (2013) by Freda F. Solomon, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow The full report is available on CJA’s web site: www.nycja.org/library.php Research Assistance: Jonathan Carmona Systems Programming: Geraldine Staehs-Goirn Address comments to the author at fsolomon@nycja.org Please cite as follows, adapted to your citation style: Solomon, Freda F. 2015. “Impact of the Queens Supervised Release Program on Legal Outcomes” Research Brief series, no. 36 New York: New York City Criminal Justice Agency, Inc.


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