New York SAC: Pretrial Outcome Project

The State Justice Statistics (SJS) Program is designed to maintain and enhance each state's capacity to address criminal justice issues through collection and analysis of data. The SJS Program provides support to each state to coordinate and conduct statistical activities within the state, conduct research to estimate impacts of legislative and policy changes, and serve as a liaison in assisting BJS to gather data from respondent agencies within their states. The NYSAC is located within the Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), which is housed within the Executive Department under the Executive Branch, headed by the Governor. Under this award, the NYSAC will conduct a 3-year core capacity building project to explore how to fully leverage available court and criminal history data to examine pretrial release outcomes and sentencing outcomes in partnership with the NYS Office of Court Administration (OCA). The activities include the analysis of pretrial release or detention practices, and sentencing outcomes. The project design includes merging different datasets from two different state agencies, analyzing statewide criminal court data, and sharing the findings and results with the public. The 3-year plan envision the first year of testing and analyzing 2018 arraignment cases and producing a descriptive report on pretrial decisions and outcomes. The OCA data will be merged with in-house criminal history data. The 2nd year includes preparing a report similar to the 2018 arraignment data but using 2019 arraignment data. Outcome analyses using the 2018 arraignment cases will also be conducted in the 2nd year plan. The 3rd and final year includes testing and analyzing 2020 arraignment cases under the new system for bail reform and producing report in pretrial decisions and outcomes. The 3rd year also includes conducting a disposition outcome analyses for the 2019 arraignment cases. SJS funds will be used to support two graduate research assistants to conduct the analyses and summarizing data outcomes. (CA/NCF)