Budget Cuts Interfere With Courts' Legal Obligations

[colcifer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/ny...imes&seid=auto

In Brooklyn, a night in jail often lasts longer than one night. Sometimes it can drag out over two or even three nights.
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Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Brooklyn Criminal Court, which handles the most arraignments of any court in the city, has reduced its weekend hours in response to state budget cuts, and people have had to wait up to three days to see a judge.
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Last month, the city’s criminal courts reduced their weekend hours, shortening shifts in response to state budget cuts. Court officials promised to monitor the dockets “hour by hour and day by day” to ensure that prisoners were arraigned promptly.

But the result has been what defense lawyers feared: People arrested may wait for days before appearing in front of a judge, particularly in Brooklyn Criminal Court, which handles the highest volume of arraignments.

State law requires that the authorities bring defendants before a judge “without unnecessary delay,” which the state’s highest court has interpreted to mean 24 hours under normal conditions.

But in Brooklyn, many defendants arrested on relatively minor charges are waiting far longer. The backlog grows on weekends, when arrest numbers climb and the courts scale back their hours.

Andre Parker, 45, a construction worker, was arrested Friday evening for tossing a lottery ticket to the ground and then refusing a police officer’s order to pick it up or show his identification, according to the officer’s account. Mr. Parker said he was not arraigned until Sunday afternoon. While waiting in a holding cell in the courthouse, another person “was throwing up blood,” Mr. Parker said.

When Mr. Parker was finally arraigned, the judge said his case would be dismissed if he stayed out of trouble for six months, a common disposition for low-level offenses.

“It took me three days,” Mr. Parker said of the time he spent waiting to see a judge. “It was ridiculous.”

On Tuesday, court officials pledged to add more hours to weekend shifts to increase the number of arraignments in Brooklyn Criminal Court. “We recognize that it was certainly not acceptable to continue on the current path,” David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the state’s Office of Court Administration, said.

On average, the time between arrest and arraignment in Brooklyn during recent weekends was just under 31 hours, according to statistics provided by the mayor’s office. Last summer, before the courts reduced their hours, the average time was just over 24 hours on the same weekends.

By Monday morning, 170 of the 292 defendants waiting to see a judge in Brooklyn Criminal Court had been arrested more than 24 hours earlier, according to statistics provided by the Legal Aid Society. Some had been arrested on Friday.

“People shouldn’t be spending two or three days in jail” waiting to see a judge, the mayor’s criminal justice coordinator, John Feinblatt, said in an interview.

Mr. Feinblatt has been urging the court system since last month to schedule more time for arraignments.

“It’s not working,” he said of the courts’ reduced hours. “We’re left reaching the obvious conclusion that we need to go back to a schedule that we had before so that we can meet our legal obligations.”

Mr. Feinblatt added that the problem was not confined to Brooklyn.

“We’re seeing problems elsewhere, as well,” he said. The average arrest-to-arraignment time on the weekend in all city courts was just over 26 hours.

Legal Aid lawyers said that abiding by the 24-hour arrest-to-arraignment time limit was especially important in light of the large number of people arrested for minor infractions that rarely result in prosecutors’ seeking jail time. In one recent week, 294 people arraigned in Brooklyn Criminal Court had their cases immediately dismissed or were given adjournments in contemplation of dismissal, meaning their cases, like Mr. Parker’s, would be dismissed if they stayed out of trouble for six months, according to statistics provided by Legal Aid.

In such cases, each day spent waiting in jail is one more day of incarceration than the judge would have imposed.

“A lot of these people should never even spend an hour in central booking,” said one lawyer, Julie Fry, who is vice president of the Brooklyn division of the union representing Legal Aid lawyers.

In many instances, the police can decide whether to send someone they arrested before a judge or to issue the person a court summons called a desk-appearance ticket, thereby freeing the person after several hours of arrest.

In police slang, the tickets are dismissively referred to as “disappearance tickets” because of the risk that the recipients will not show up for their court dates. In Brooklyn, the number of desk-appearance tickets issued rose 39.5 percent between 2009 and 2010, according to statistics provided by the mayor’s office.

Reminds me of the problem cass had .

[Longhair]

Due to budget cuts, the courts have shortened their hours to make up for the reduced funds. At the same time, the hours a person spends in jail is extended.

Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't it cost more money having people sit in jail for longer periods of time?