Good afternoon, Chair Salaam, Chair Brannan, and esteemed committee members – thank you for this opportunity to present our FY-26 executive budget and priorities.

I’m Deanna Logan, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, and joining me today is Chief of Staff Nora Daniel, Chief Financial Officer Robert Fiato, and Chief Operating Officer Candice Julien.

I imagine with all the moving parts of NYC the evolution of our agency in recent years may not be front of mind. That’s fine if I get you to remember that MOCJ is an essential service in the Public Safety continuum designed to make a difference; not headlines.

The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice is an agency on the rise, doing invaluable work to help reduce our jail populations; combat hate crimes; stop those that seek to reduce our housing stock and make our neighborhoods safer by breaking cycles of criminal behavior that plague New Yorkers.

We work with defense attorneys and prosecutors to improve our justice system using data to innovate pilot programs you won’t find anywhere else in America. We empower justice-impacted New Yorkers make safer transitions back into the community.

We don’t want anyone spending one day more – or one day less – in jail than necessary.

At the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, we bring stakeholders together to create solutions. Now, we’re doing it under our own, standalone agency code too, having completed a two-year transition that improved our information technology, human resources, and oversight capabilities.

For the upcoming fiscal year, our executive budget proposes 787 million dollars to sustain our vital programs. Today, I’ll explain why that’s not an expense, but an investment for New York City.

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One core investment: re-entry programs.

Providing meaningful pathways for New Yorkers to successfully return home from incarceration is essential – for the benefit of both the individual and the neighborhoods they call home.

Individuals with criminal records often face immense challenges — finding housing, a stable job, access to medical care, continuing their education and just being supported in their humanity as people and citizens. Our programs help bridge those gaps.

We allocate 26 million dollars a year to re-entry initiatives that include: – discharge planning while still at Rikers or prison – employment support – and comprehensive services after release, to help stabilize life for the justice-involved person…and their families.

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Our office also directs 32 million dollars annually to Alternative to Incarceration efforts – known as “ATI.”

This program helps reduce incarceration by offering structured alternatives to jail for more than 5,000 New Yorkers each year. We address root issues, like mental health and substance misuse, while holding participants accountable. Connecting individuals to important services, while keeping them in their communities – often, with their families – helps lower incarceration rates, recidivism rates, and the cost to taxpayers.

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The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice leads pretrial innovations, including our successful Supervised Release Program. Introduced in 2016, S.R.P. gives judges the option to release individuals – with supervision – into stable situations that are closer to their families.

Similar to ATI, we provide assistance in attending court, accessing employment services, and getting referrals for treatment when necessary.

Thousands benefit from supportive supervision each year, instead of sitting in jail.

When I was here last month, I told you about our pilot providing intensive support for high-needs individuals operating in Queens and Manhattan. This pilot is the epitome of how we use data to innovate solutions.

Individuals with higher needs must be supported by people with more experienced clinical expertise. Infusing highly specific person-centered care in our services means that the more experienced clinical staff support fewer individuals and thus increase the amount of time they spend with each client addressing the client’s needs. In this pilot our ability to review the research data and real time testing of the service models is yielding some promising early results, including significantly lower rearrest and noncompliance rates. We are looking forward to sharing more as the pilot continues.

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A foundational building block of stability is housing.

Without a reliable place to leave your things and come back to, individuals leaving jail or prison are far more likely to spiral and find themselves once again navigating the criminal legal system. But provide someone the stability of a home; and they’re less likely to fall back into cycles of crime. Participants in our program are about 30% less likely to be rearrested in the year after transitional housing, compared to the year prior.

This program evolved from a pandemic-era emergency program into a remarkable, sustainable system that helps thousands of individuals every year – with hundreds of people leveraging that support and stability to find safe, permanent housing.

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These Programs Work.

A significant part of this work that must not be forgotten is that the providers of all these services are caring professionals that ensure they offer solutions centered on the people we serve.

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Given the essential foundation housing provides, we also fight to keep the housing market affordable for all New Yorkers, through the work of our Office of Special Enforcement.

Their efforts to combat illegal short-term rentals preserves housing for local renters and stability for New York neighborhoods.

In the two years since Local Law 18 took effect…we’ve seen the world’s largest online booking sites remove illegal short-term rentals from their New York listings.

In partnership with the Department of Buildings and FDNY, they’re ensuring residential spaces remain safe, livable, and available for New Yorkers.

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Our Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes (OPHC) is a small – but mighty – team innovating new ways to tackle bias and hate – and they’re setting an example for the rest of the country.

We work with NYPD, community organizations, and other stakeholders to educate, de-escalate, and support affected communities. We fund grassroots initiatives under the “Partners Against the Hate” program, and we support the “Breaking Bread, Building Bonds” initiative launched by Mayor Adams.

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MOCJ works hard to preserve a cornerstone of justice for tens of thousands of New Yorkers: equal access to legal defense.

We coordinate the City’s provision of criminal Indigent legal services including conflict counsel cases handled by the Assigned Counsel Plan. Working collaboratively with the state we ensure that the City affords quality representation for those who can’t afford private counsel.

To better-manage this work, we created a dedicated legal team focused on contracts and fiscal matters…which helped our finance staff register all contracts on-time in FY25…and we’re on track to repeat that success in FY26.

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With dozens of MOCJ programs and hundreds of MOCJ partners – it would take me hours to detail all the impact our work is having across New York City. But a few last highlights you should know about:

· “Project Reset” is a fantastic second-chance program helping low-level, nonviolent offenders avoid criminal records through a pre-arraignment diversion program.

· “Restorative Justice” is a program that uses the time-tested strategy of bringing parties together to promote healing – as well as public safety.

· “Project Restore Bed-Stuy,” is a deterrence pilot in collaboration with the Office of the Kings County District Attorney and Columbia University Social Relations Lab that afforded 30 young men the agency to exit cycles of gun and gang violence – and offered a new de-escalation model for cities everywhere.

· “Flip the Script” is a program for justice-involved youth in Brownsville, who are now working apprenticeships in the film industry…and producing their own movie that will receive a red-carpet premier later this year.

· And our CDL training and employment program which was last week featured nationally on the CBS Evening News – for its stunning success in helping justice-involved New Yorkers land six-figure jobs in the trucking industry.

Change is hard work. We’re doing that work.

While we don’t expect to fix every challenge in our criminal justice system; we are making it fairer for the individuals in the system.

We’re improving safety – and the health – of communities across the city.

With a front-row seat to how our investments are improving lives, I can confidently say your investment in the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice – now its own, stand-alone agency – will help advance your constituents’ priorities too.

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss our solutions…and I look forward to our continued partnership in advancing justice and safety.