'We are not there yet' — Queens DA not ready to end cash bail without stronger pretrial resources
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Queens DA Melinda Katz at her inauguration on January 6. Eagle photo by Caroline Ourso
By David Brand
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said Thursday that her office is not yet ready to fulfill her campaign pledge of ending cash bail because there are too few local resources and pretrial programs available to execute the policy change.
Katz’s statements about her office’s bail policies came during an interview with Errol Louis on NY1’s Inside City Hall , where Louis read from a Queens Eagle story about assistant district attorneys continuing to request cash bail at arraignment.
The ADA prosecuting the first case of 2020 requested $50,000 cash bail for a man charged with first-degree robbery after he allegedly stole a cell phone while threatening a victim with a sharp object.
“That’s different than what you said on the campaign trail,” Louis said, referring to Katz’s pledge not to ask for cash bail.
NY1 Inside City Hall anchor Errol Louis read from a Queens Eagle article while questioning Queens DA Melinda Katz on cash bail. Screenshot via NY1
“What I said, and I do believe it deep in my heart, is that cash bail is unfair, it’s inequitable,” Katz responded. “Not to have cash bail is really where this state needs to go. We are not there yet.”
She said several programs, like supervised release and pretrial monitoring, must first expand before Queens prosecutors stop requesting cash bail. She also said the office does not have the necessary staff or resources to completely eliminate the use of cash bail at this point.
“We are not ready for that and neither is the state,” Katz said. “When we do a bail ask, we are trying to lessen numbers … We are trying to look at the realistic component right now.”
At the start of her campaign for the Democratic nomination for Queens DA, Katz pledged to never ask for cash bail on misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies. Some of Katz’s opponents in the race went even further, pledging to never ask for cash bail in any circumstances. Eventually, Katz adopted the same position.
“Under my administration, we will have no cash bail,” she said during a June 2019 debate on NY1. Her campaign website also refers to “ending cash bail completely.”
But such major policy changes take time to implement in a way that does not lead to unintended consequences, said Lucy Lang, director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College.
“Thoughtful policy change is rarely immediate and requires a major redirection of resources, training and careful implementation of protocols to make sure the goals of the system are met,” said Lang, a research professor at John Jay College.
“Queens is not yet in a position to end the use of cash bail,” Lang continued. “They haven’t built out infrastructure to ensure people return to court if cash bail is not set. I think they’re in the process of trying to build that.”
