Morano asks about 50% juvenile rearrest increase; Dessimore cites staffing and unit alignment

However, I don't know of anyone involved in any high crime or violent crime or anything like that.

The committee report indicated that juvenile rearrests increased by 50%.

That's very concerning to me, not just because it means young people are getting into more trouble, but because every additional crime potentially means another innocent New Yorker has been victimized.

Can you tell us what's behind that 50% increase, including the time period it covers, and what percentage of those rearrests involved violent offenses?

Good morning, Stacey Decimor, Deputy Commissioner for Juvenile Operations.

So as you know, we all know that the juvenile arrest numbers have increased.

But I do want to say that since this commissioner has been here, our arrest rate has started to decrease, right?

And one of the things that she talked about is making sure that we are supervising the young people one size fits one, right?

We want to make sure that we are targeting those young people as soon as they get placed on probation.

We are making sure that we are connecting with their circle of influence, who is important to that young person, who is able to help navigate the system with that young person.

We are also making sure that we are really sharing that load with our community-based organizations, right?

It's a collective approach, and it's a partnership.

We also know that we want to make sure that we have the right staff and enough staff, right?

So that is why we are staffing up to make sure that we have enough officers for those high-risk caseloads.

Currently, we have, out of the 43 supervision officers in juvenile, we have 18 that are strictly monitoring those cases.

So we have some branches that have gun units, you know, for those that are on probation for firearms.

We have those that are in level four, which is your highest level of supervision.

We want to make sure that they have the lower caseload attacking them.

and making sure that they're getting the services.

It's not where we want to be.

We understand it's a challenge, and we are always about public safety, and we are working diligently to lower that arrest rate.

Got it.

Well, no, we all want the same thing.

I wanted to add, since my appointment has been nine months, and so just like adult, juvenile also, we went back and reassessed all those cases and separated them out so we can focus

intently on who needs the most intervention.