Chief judge backs pair of criminal justice reform bills
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Chief Judge Rowan Wilson came out in support of some form the Treatment Not Jails Act and the Second Look Act last week. File photo via Office of Governor of New York/Darren McGee
By Jacob Kaye
New York’s top judge last week urged Albany to pass into law a pair of bills that he said would go a long way toward reforming the state’s sentencing laws and toward correcting historic inequities in the state’s criminal justice system.
Speaking as part of a panel on mass incarceration and sentencing reform at an event organized by the Center for Community Alternatives and Data Collaborative for Justice last week, Chief Judge Rowan Wilson called on the legislature to pass and the governor to sign some version of the Second Look and the Treatment Not Jails Acts into law.
The longtime criminal justice reform advocate who now leads the state’s court system as well as its highest court said that working hand-in-hand, the bills would help prevent people from entering into jails and prisons and would help those already behind bars for decades reenter society.
“If we could pass both some form of the Second Look Act and some form of the Treatment Not Jails legislation in the next legislative session, I think we will make a giant step forward,” Wilson said.
“We need to stop incarcerating people who could have potentially treatable mental health or substance abuse issues, which are often co-occurring disorders, and treat them instead of jailing them in the first place,” he added. “And then we also address the Second Look Act for people who have been incarcerated for a long time.”
The Treatment Not Jails Act, which is sponsored by Queens State Senator Jessica Ramos, would, among other things, require that each county in the state have a diversion part. Currently, only 26 of the state’s 62 counties have mental health courts.
The bill would also require that judges undergo additional training on mental health courts. It would also expand eligibility for mental health courts by eliminating charge-based exclusions.
Currently, around half of all those detained on Rikers Island awaiting trial have been given a mental health diagnosis.
In support of the bill, Ramos, who represents a portion of Northwest Queens, recently took a trip to two different diversion courts in the World’s Borough – drug treatment court and veterans court.
The Queens lawmaker said in a recent interview with the Eagle that took place prior Wilson’s comments on the bill that she walked away from her latest court watch feeling as though the state “need[s] to get mental health care to people as early as possible.”
“I'm a big believer that we should be evaluating a person's mental health at arraignment,” Ramos said. “We should be able to allocate resources to address the crisis that we're in, which can only be tackled by creating a system of rehabilitative and corrective measures in order to keep people safe.”
“But we are in the very beginning stages of that journey,” she added. “This system of care that is gravely needed to keep us safe does not exist at the scale we need.”
The Second Look Act, which is sponsored by Brooklyn and Queens State Senator Julia Salazar and co-sponsored by Queens Senators Michael Gianaris, Leroy Comrie, Kristen Gonzalez and Ramos, would allow for New Yorkers sentenced to a decade or more to apply for a resentencing hearing. Under the legislation, incarcerated New Yorkers serving “lengthy sentences” would be able to provide post-sentencing information and “mitigation from years of incarceration” to a judge to use in their consideration of reducing the sentence.
Currently, incarcerated individuals have very few opportunities available to them to request their sentences be reviewed. Under the legislation, incarcerated New Yorkers would be given a formal process, which is already used by a handful of states and under consideration by around two dozen others, to request a judge consider their efforts while incarcerated and reconsider their sentences. The judges would also be able to factor in changes to sentencing guidelines and norms in the decades that have passed since the individual was first sentenced.
“Second Look, yes, it’s very important, but we also need to make sure that…people have the support they need in the community,” Wilson said last week.
Wilson’s comments last week are only his latest public endorsements of legislation or policies that aim to reform the state’s courts and criminal justice system into systems that are more intent on addressing the root problems of crime rather than punishing the person who committed them.
During his State of the Judiciary speech given earlier this year, the chief judge said that he and his leadership team were focused on redefining a judge’s role in a courtroom.
Wilson said that New Yorkers should stop thinking about “courts as places where a judge merely decides which party is right and which is wrong.”
“Instead, we should think of the courts as similar to our other branches of government – institutions that attempt to make decisions that will improve the lives of those we serve,” Wilson said in February.
“Let's think of our courts as problem solvers, not solely as adjudicators of which party is right,” he added.
Wilson also was a proponent of a $12 million boost for mental health courts included in the state’s recently passed Fiscal Year 2025 budget.
Shortly after the budget’s passage, Wilson and Governor Kathy Hochul took a trip to the Midtown Community Justice Center, one of the state’s first-ever problem solving courts. Wilson called the court “the incubator and the proving ground for a better way.”
“In this very humble courtroom and in our more than 300 other problem-solving courts around New York, you can see the future,” Wilson said in Manhattan. “What you see is a team of people with different roles – prosecutor, defense attorney, social worker, court attorney, court officer and others – all working together for a single goal: improving the lives of troubled New Yorkers, while simultaneously making our communities better, stronger and safer.”
During the panel discussion last week, Wilson criticized the status quo of the state’s criminal justice system.
“It’s kind of funny that the [Department of Correction and Community Supervision] is called what it’s called,” Wilson said. “As the Department of Corrections, which it seems to be doing a whole lot of, but as community and supervision, they sort of do but it’s mostly a way to pull people back in.”
