Criminal justice officials and researchers analyzing arrest data have identified a small group of repeat criminal defendants who, if properly monitored and supported with social services, may present an opportunity to reduce street crime in New York City.

The group represents a small portion of all of those charged with crimes over the last two years, but they stand out because they’re repeatedly arrested in short periods of time while also failing at high rates to show up to their court hearings. They also appear to be responsible for a disproportionately large percentage of alleged crimes. The debate over changing bail laws, which dominates the state legislature and has delayed approval of the state budget, is now turning to what should be done about these alleged recidivists.

Researchers and some city officials say providing them with comprehensive mental health, housing, and drug rehabilitation services could stop some of them from cycling through a clogged criminal justice system, and even improve public safety. Others, like Gov. Kathy Hochul, say judges should be granted extra discretion to impose bail on that group.

“It’s time to have a new debate,” said Aubrey Fox, executive director of the nonprofit New York City Criminal Justice Agency, which oversees Supervised Release programs for people charged with crimes. “Let’s stop solely focusing on whether bail reform is good or bad, and let’s be honest about the challenges we face. The current system is working well for most, but we need better ways of addressing this small group of people who are coming through the system repeatedly.”

A data dashboard published today by Fox’s nonprofit and shared in advance with Gothamist allows users to zero in on the repeat offenders who researchers say may be responsible for many crimes in the city. The dashboard shows how many people are arrested, and how often, each year. Of the more than 92,000 people arrested last year, it shows that 2,505 were arrested five or more times. Notably, the most serious charges that most people in that group faced were misdemeanors and non-violent felonies, which further indicates a population of people who might be helped with more robust social services rather than incarceration, researchers said.

Ironically, when looking at the group of people arrested five or more times within a single year, current bail reform measures would not have significantly affected their legal outcomes, the data show. The bail reforms of 2020 limited judges’ ability to hold people at Rikers Island jails before their court hearings if they couldn’t pay bail. It mostly affected those with misdemeanors and non-violent felonies, though, and didn’t significantly affect this highly concentrated group of repeat offenders.

So while such reforms have been blamed by police officials and politicians for enabling recidivism, the new statistics show that the number of people arrested five or more times within a single year was almost exactly the same in 2018, before bail reform was passed, as in 2022. And this group of people was almost just as likely to have bail set after the reforms as before.

Addressing this small group of repeat offenders is an approach also being adopted by city officials. At a recent public safety briefing for the public, Deanna Logan, director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, cited data that her office crunched that’s rooted in a similar methodology: 9,000 people who have a “recent persistent pattern of recurring criminal charges and missing court,” including a pocket of 2,000 who go on to be charged with violent felonies.

In 2022, these 9,000 people represented just 8% of all people arrested, but they were responsible for a widely disproportionate percentage of the crime, Logan said, including 60% of petit larceny arrests and 57% of felony burglary arrests. They are also eight times less likely to show up to court hearings than those who aren’t repeatedly charged with crimes.

“The data is clear: It shows that people who have recent patterns of recurring criminal charges are driving a considerable amount of the crime we’re seeing today,” Logan said.

Notably, Logan said incarceration was not necessarily the best approach for handling this population. “We know that many among the recidivist group are struggling with a heightened level of need, and it means that in specific cases we must employ a much more targeted form of support and supervision to provide intense services, accountability [and] coping skills that will afford these individuals an ability to overcome their behavior,” he said.

She said these people can be identified at arraignments. They can then be connected with housing support and trauma-informed mental health care, since the prospect of going to court might prompt a flight-or-fight response. Logan said she will be coordinating with other agencies to figure out ways to help this population to ensure they return to court and don’t reoffend.

After Logan presented the data at the briefing, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks echoed her sentiment, saying incarceration of such recidivists should be a “last resort.” For a mayoral administration that has often endorsed more stringent incarceration policies, this appeared to be an opportunity for solutions beyond Rikers Island.

Enhanced supervised release

So what might such a solution -- the provision of more intensive services for this population of alleged repeated offenders -- look like? A starting point, researchers said, is Supervised Release.

This program, which began in the city in 2016, allows those with pending cases to be released while under supervision of one of four nonprofit agencies contracted with the city. Caseworkers from these agencies meet with released people in person, connect them with housing and job services, and try to ensure that they show up to court hearings.

Data shows that Supervised Release has been successful in making sure people charged with low-level offenses return to court and avoid rearrest, but it has been less effective in aiding those with more serious and repeat charges.

To address this population of alleged recidivists, a more robust version of Supervised Release -- with more city funding -- might be required, according to Fox of CJA, which has a city contract to operate Supervised Release in Queens. Such services would include a heightened focus on behavioral and mental health, housing, and drug rehabilitation services.

“For a large majority of people, pretrial release and services like the current version of Supervised Release are working well, but we need to acknowledge that there’s a small group of people cycling through the system repeatedly, often on very serious alleged charges, who pose real challenges,” Fox said.

“That’s where the debate should be focused, and we won’t make much progress unless we can be honest about the data and humble about the complexity of the problem.”

Discretion to impose bail

Hochul favors a different tack for repeat alleged offenders: Giving judges broader discretion to impose bail on those they deem too dangerous to be released. She seeks to remove the “least restrictive” standard that judges now must impose to make sure defendants return to court on bail-eligible offenses. She says under her plan, judges would be more likely to consider history of gun use and prior offenses, for example.

Criminal justice reformers believe this could return the city to an age of mass incarceration, sweeping up far more alleged offenders who would otherwise show up to their court hearings without having to be locked up, all because they can’t afford bail. But Hochul has made this a steadfast demand in ongoing budget talks with the state legislature, and negotiations are ongoing.

Last week, to buoy her case, she released data that reaches similar conclusions as the new Criminal Justice Agency statistics. Bail reform is working for the lower-level offenses that are not eligible for bail -- recidivism has actually gone down, she said -- but rearrests are increasing for people with violent felonies. “In other words, a relatively small percentage of people are responsible for a disproportionate share of our public safety challenges,” she said. “These individuals are the ones who are a focus of our bail reform proposal.”

Mayor Eric Adams, who referenced the same group of 2,000 “extreme recidivists” in testimony at the state capitol in February, agrees with Hochul that the “least restrictive” condition for setting bail needs to be scrapped either for all defendants, or this population of alleged recidivists, according to spokesman Jonah Allon.

Allon did not say whether Adams would support a more enhanced version of Supervised Release. The city currently has three-year contracts for Supervised Release service providers that total $201 million, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office, but providers say they need more funds to handle increasing demand. Internal debates over city funding for the coming fiscal year are currently underway.

Stanley Richards, chief operating officer of the Fortune Society, which provides Supervised Release services, said the new data forces decision-makers to answer critical questions: “Do you want to really address the underlying causes of incarceration and the disproportionate impact on Black and brown communities? Or do you want again to look at the top line concern and fail to address the root causes? And we have an opportunity now to address the root causes.”