New York City will spend $36.8 million on social services for repeat offenders, encouraging them to stay out of trouble and show up for court as they await trial.
The funding, part of the city budget adopted Friday, will augment the supervised release program which refers criminal defendants to nonprofit agencies, where social workers connect them to services like drug rehabilitation and mental health care.
Tens of thousands of people have been assigned to supervised release rather than sent to Rikers Island to await trial. The social workers who work at the nonprofit agencies, contracted by the city to run the program, say it has helped people avoid rearrest and show up to their court dates.
But until now, supervised release has not been as successful in addressing those who are repeatedly arrested for serious crimes within a short period of time, according to Deanna Logan, director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, which funds and oversees the program. That’s why, she said, the city is piloting an augmented form of supervised release, called “intensive case management,” for recidivists with higher-level needs.
“These are the tools that we have been talking about with our partners that will really move the needle in supporting the population,” Logan said Friday on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, where she publicly detailed the program for the first time.
Approximately 1,100 people will get more intensive case management through supervised release in the coming fiscal year, in part by increasing funding to the current program to reduce case managers’ work load. Logan said that means more attention from their social workers, with requirements that defendants, for example, regularly report in-person to the program and attend cognitive behavioral therapy sessions.
The plan is to expand the program later. Logan said at any given time there are about 9,000 people who have been arrested for felonies while their cases play out on other felony charges. This…
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