City officials fear mass bailout at rikers could endanger crime victims

Prosecutors in the Bronx said they were working to safeguard as many people who might be vulnerable through measures like orders of protection.

“We are doing all we can to protect our victims and witnesses in the event the defendants accused of violence against them are released from jail,” Darcel D. Clark, the Bronx district attorney, said in a statement.

The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights group is raising up to $5 million for the bailout, and will enlist 200 volunteers to help identify and free female prisoners at the Rose M. Singer Center, and 16- and 17-year-olds at the Robert N. Davoren Complex, starting Oct. 1.

Kerry Kennedy, president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, says the plan, which organizers believe could be one of the largest mass bailouts in the country, will move forward despite the city’s concerns.

The bailout is designed to support an end to cash bail, which activists say discriminates against minorities and the poor, and to push the city to close the dangerous Rikers jail complex more quickly than the current 10-year timeline. Approximately 87 percent of the jail population is black and Latino.

“What they’re really saying is they are concerned about poor people accused of crimes because there are no rich people currently accused of crimes caged on Rikers Island,” Kennedy said in an interview. “Just look how the system treats people like Harvey Weinstein. Eighty women said they were attacked by one guy, and he got bail and he never spent a second on Rikers.”

The plan may expand to include prisoners who turned 18 while on Rikers, according to the group. The organization will also connect those who are bailed out with appropriate social services.

The purpose of bail, according to New York state law, is to ensure a defendant’s return to court. Judges can, under limited circumstances, remand defendants without bail. Judges are supposed to consider a defendant’s ability to pay bail in their decision but that seldom happens, according to criminal defense lawyers.

Roughly 80 percent of the Rikers population is awaiting trial; more than 75 percent of them are eventually released without being sentenced to prison.

“I don’t think anyone should be locked up solely because they can’t afford to buy their freedom, but that’s what happens to blacks and Latinos living in certain communities while the privileged, often charged with far worse crimes, are walking free,” said Scott Hechinger, senior staff attorney and the director of policy at Brooklyn Defender Services, which represents more than 30,000 people arrested each year in Brooklyn.

Hechinger cited a client represented by Brooklyn Defender Services who has been held since June on $750 bail for allegedly stealing multiple pairs of shoes. Because the woman was accused of entering the vestibule of an apartment building to steal the shoes, the crime she is charged with is technically considered a violent felony.

A 2017 study from the Vera Institute of Justice tracked 99 cases in which unsecured bail or partially secured bond was granted, and 54 percent of cases included defendants charged with a felony. The study found that 88 percent of defendants returned to court; only 8 percent were arrested pretrial on another felony charge.

“There is this misconception that people who are on Rikers need to be there because if they are let out, the streets will run with blood,” Hechinger said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and some district attorneys say they favor bail reform, but believe the mass bailout should only be for people charged with low-level offenses. Kennedy officials said they will consider all bail-eligible women and teenagers regardless of the crime they are charged with.

Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney of Manhattan, said “there are certain individuals detained on Manhattan cases who, if released without a court-reviewed, predetermined supervised release and safety plan, are flight risks and may pose a public safety risk to the community.”

Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill said he was concerned about witness intimidation and retaliation.

Some City Council members called the positions of de Blasio and the city’s law enforcement officials hypocritical. Rory I. Lancman, a Queens councilman, said because there are protocols in place that allow judges to keep those who are a danger to others in custody, the bailout “is brilliantly exposing the fallacy of our bail system.”

Ritchie Torres, a Bronx councilman, said the debate reminds him of the fear of a crime wave that took place when activists began calling for an end to the police practice of stop and frisk.

“Allowing people who have neither been tried or convicted to languish in jail violates the spirit of the Constitution,” Torres said. “Pretrial incarceration has become the penalty for poverty, for mental illness and for blackness.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

City officials fear mass bailout at rikers could endanger crime victims

Across the city, prosecutors are identifying cases that might be affected by the bailout, and calling hundreds of crime victims and witnesses in those cases to let them know that defendants who they thought were in custody might soon be released on bail.

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