Summary

Historic criminal legal legislative reforms were enacted by the New York State Assembly in April 2019. These reforms include provisions to eliminate cash bail and pretrial detention for most misdemeanor offenses, establish swift timelines for discovery turnover, and institute an updated system of non-monetary conditions of pretrial release.

As part of the 2020 amendments, court administrators are now also required to collect and report on data regarding people charged with criminal offenses and what happens during the pretrial phase of each case. Pretrial service agencies must submit Annual Reports to the Office of Court Administration (OCA), which will be posted on OCA’s website. The new amendments require court administrators to collect and report on a number of different data points regarding the pretrial phase of each case. These data points include the number of people released pretrial and what conditions they are placed under, failure to appear and rearrest rates, how many people are committed to pretrial custody and pretrial incarceration and for what length of time, as well as case outcomes. The legislation enumerates a list of data elements that pretrial agencies must track for inclusion in the Annual Reports.

Pretrial agencies are only responsible for reporting on the outcomes of those under their supervision.

The OCA data collection tool provides the following data points to help pretrial agencies fulfill the mandate:

Client Name
Age at Release Under Supervision (RUS) (requires DOB to calculate)
Race
Ethnicity
Gender
Length of supervision (automatically calculated with Release Date and Case Close Out Date)
Top Arraignment Charge and Severity
Violent Felony (Yes/No)
Case close out reason
Supervision revocation, if applicable
Non-monetary release condition(s)
Modification of conditions, if applicable
Sentencing Information

Reforms were modified in 2020 to expand upon the list of possible non-monetary conditions (e.g., placement in mandatory programming, maintain employment, or housing). OCA has provided a data collection tool in the form of an excel spreadsheet for agencies to use to input data elements. The courts and the Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) are due to release their first reports twelve months and eighteen months from the statute’s effective date (July 2020).