Stevens challenges value of DA meetings in reducing population
Stevens interjects that district attorneys told her they had only two meetings mostly about secure detention information. She asks how the meetings reduce the population; Popper says the meetings share new investments, programs, and case-delay issues.
Can I just interject really quickly because one of the things when I spoke with the DAs they said that they've had two meetings and
it was more information and it was about telling them about secure detention so I'm just trying to get a better understanding of how are these meetings helping meet the crisis that we're in and reducing the population so I'm trying to understand how are these meetings helping that because that's
my experience is that's not what's been happening.
Yeah, that's a great question.
Well, I mean, as we've talked about, one of the important things is getting information to all the court stakeholders about the new investments that are coming online, about the programs that exist.
And so we're very excited about building out a resource guide for each borough to make sure they know about that.
But we're also doing that in the meetings.
So we've, at one of our meetings,
our meetings we talked about some of the new investments that were mentioned in that press release what's going to be coming online we've had probation come to talk about the new ICM connect program which is part of our population reduction direction strategy
and so in those meetings we always leave time to say
We want to be hearing from you about what are the other things that are affecting case delay right now that we can be working with our city partners on and the other court partners as well.
You know, are there issues, you know,
getting discovery from NYPD.
And so my understanding is every six weeks, you all are sharing what you have, the resources, investments, you're leaving space for them, and you're saying, what can we do?
And are there concrete proposals coming out from that side?
So we are developing concrete proposals as we speak to each of these partners.
And, for example, we've been working on, you know, one of the aspects is on case delay.
And so thinking about how can we make sure that mitigation reports are getting to the court sooner.
That's one of the things that is holding up cases.
And so making sure that 18B attorneys, for example, have social work support.
And mitigation specialists on board for every single case that starts in the youth part.
So the things coming out of these conversations, we're able to turn into policy recommendations.
Okay.
Chair, I just wanted to get my original, my other question asked first.
Thank you for the recounting of the DA meetings and the court liaisons.