Hanif questions Youth Justice Bureau staffing and ankle monitors

Thank you, Chair Stevens, and thank you, D.A.

Clark, for joining us.

I'm Councilmember Shahanahini from Brooklyn.

I wanted to know a little bit more about the youth.

Justice Bureau, what's the staffing levels of the Bureau and funding for the Bureau?

I'm grateful to learn more about that.

And would love to know, you know, how often is your office requesting detention rather than community-based alternatives?

I mean, I was shocked to learn that the electronic ankle monitoring

costs are so high that it is actually, young people are not using or able to afford, and so they're likely to be detained.

Could you talk a little bit more about the options in terms of remaining detained and being

housed but with an ankle monitor?

Yeah, with respect to the Bureau, right now we have nine assistant district attorneys and we have a leadership team of three.

And we have support staff that is professional staff, legal support staff of about eight people helping us out.

That's what the Bureau is.

It's 19, 20 people managing all of the cases in two youth parts, okay?

That's the structure of the Bureau.

With respect to your question regarding retention and ankle monitors, what's happening now is the cases that are being retained are really simply only the cases that must be retained.

Because remember, a judge is reviewing it.

It's not the district attorney's office deciding to retain a case.

We decide to move towards retention, but we bring that in front of the court, and the court is...

is the one that's reviewing what it is that we have as evidence and whether that evidence supports us retaining that case in the youth part.

So the judge decides that.

So you're saying the judge is deciding who is staying at Horizons or Crossroads?

No, deciding who's staying in the youth part.

Now, with respect to detention, when the person is in custody,

versus when the person is on ankle monitor, that's a different decision.

Well, the judge decides all of that too, but when the child goes to Horizons or Crossroads and whether they're in custody and how long they remain there and what we know about what goes on in custody, that's a different conversation.

But with respect to a different conversation in the sense that

Horizons and Crossroads obviously monitor what's going on with the residents that they have inside of their facilities.

We're not involved and engaged in that on a daily basis, and we don't know what's going on with that, which is what Judge Clark was talking about.

We don't have information on a daily basis with respect to who's detained and who's not, because at any given moment, somebody could make bail.

And when that person makes bail, we don't necessarily get that information.

That said, in terms of ankle monitor, the judge decides whether the person should be on ankle monitor or not.

And in our jurisdiction, we're finding that the judge, the judges, we have two of them, are deciding to place a lot more people on ankle monitor than previously.

We're seeing a lot of that.

more often now than ever before, where they have an opportunity to be in the community, but on an ankle monitor, as opposed to being in custody in Horizons or Crossroads.

But it's also the city determines how many ankle monitors there are for New York City.

Remember, we're not just talking about the Bronx, we're talking about all five boroughs, and there's only a certain amount of ankle monitors for the city.

So we're talking about adults as well as youth.

But as far as the staffing is concerned, you want to address really who is the staff.

So the DA was very careful about creating this bureau and making sure the expertise was in place to know not just how to prosecute cases, but also how to deal with these issues surrounding children.

So, for instance, Marceau has extensive experience in his background.

I worked not only in this area before, but also with the law department, the juvenile delinquency and their family court division.

I was a hearing officer for special education cases as well for the city.

But our staff want to be with us.

We have teachers.

We have people who worked for ACS before, people who were in gun advocacy prevention efforts before.

So everybody has a special reason for being in the Bureau and a special expertise they bring in.