Supervised Release Marks Two-Year Milestone

The Supervised Release Program recently held its annual recognition ceremony to acknowledge clients who fulfilled their obligations and completed their cases.  Clients spoke about the positive impact the program has had on their lives. The ceremony was also an opportunity to commemorate the program's two-year anniversary.  The numbers clearly show the success of the program: in 2017, 93 percent of Bronx Supervised Release clients made their next court appearance. In this Q&A, Supervised Release program managers and staff speak about the program and plans for the future.  

What  has been the most significant accomplishment of the Supervised Release Program and its staff? 

The most significant accomplishment is the reverberating impact on lives, families and communities.  The Bronx has released 1,409 participants under supervision from March 2016 to February 2018 with a 75 percent compliance rate, proving that cash bail is not the only way to ensure that those at risk for flight or re-arrest can be appropriately supervised. 

The Most significant staff accomplishment is the continual ability to sustain the day to day fervor, insight and focus on the countless of lives we serve.  Whether it is on the front line in court advocating and going the extra mile for eligibility or contending with caseloads into the 60’s, the ability to be effective in such a high stake and emotionally charged arena speaks to their unwavering dedication and commitment to impacting lives and changing the system in the way it views and uses bail.  We are the difference makers in the bail reform fight.

Since the implementation of supervised release, there have been several charitable bail organizations that have come into existence, such as The Bronx Freedom Fund, and they do work that is quite like the work done by you and your staff every day. Can you explain what are the differences between the work being done through supervised release and charitable bail? Do you see any possible collaboration between Bronx Community Solutions and local charitable bail organizations in the future?

We all have our place in bail reform working towards the same goals, but with unique approaches of how we go about changing the narrative and infusing alternative measures into the system.

Can you talk a bit about what sort of impact supervised release has had on the culture within Bronx Criminal Court or more specifically, has supervised release become a program that judges, prosecutors and defense counsel both embrace and have some level of trust in? If so how long did it take for Bronx Community Solutions to build that trust?

BCS has a rich history of court-side collaborative innovation and sentencing programming. Pre-trial supervision was outside of our wheel house, but as a solid social service provider and monitoring agency for the court, it was not beyond our expansion capacity.  The onset of SRP was a little tricky in getting full buy in, but with key legal stakeholders like Judge Grasso, the strong reputation and credibility of BCS [Bronx Community Solutions], trainings/ technical support from MOCJ [Mayor's office of Criminal Justice], and a dedicated team of program staff, trust and reliance on the program was quickly embraced (our 3-month numbers were met in the first month).   As with ATI programming, judges, prosecutors and defense have come to rely on SRP as a viable option to give an opportunity for individuals, within a structured model, to avoid the collateral consequences of Riker’s [Island Correctional Facility].

Supervised Release is staffed by a group of dynamic social workers and resource coordinators that work daily to ensure the program’s success. Sometimes the work can be draining and even discouraging for them. If you had the chance to say give words of encouragement to your team what would they be?

The staff work tirelessly.  They are often the ones who are here working past 5 PM because there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to balance the work load.  However, they always seem to put the client first.  Court staff work now 365 days a week in 18-hour shifts, and again, they always seem to put the clients first.  I would say that your labor is not in vain – that there are countless of stories of impact that we may never know.  As people get arrested and returned to their families, against the odds, it is solely because we were there and offered the court an alternative.  They are the difference makers in this process called procedural justice and fairness.  One day when Riker’s  and the cash bail system is changed for the better, they will always be able to say, “I was a part of that.

As Supervised Release goes into its 3rd year of operations, what do you hope to see the program accomplish in the future?

Expansion into to the Domestic Violence arrest population and inclusion of programming that speaks to some of the felony arrest and younger age populations.