The outrageous delays in New York City's criminal justice system were given a human face last year, when Jennifer Gonnerman, writing in The New Yorker, introduced readers to Kalief Browder, who was 16 when he was arrested in 2010 for a robbery he says he did not commit.
He was held for three years without trial on Rikers Island before the case was dismissed. His court dates were changed again and again and again while he was in jail. Over the years, he was battered by guards, sent to solitary confinement and eventually tried to hang himself.
Throughout the hugely inefficient system, delays are routine — caused by everything from scheduling conflicts among prosecutors and defense lawyers to failure of witnesses to show up and too few judges to hear cases.
Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke apologetically of Mr. Browder's case this week when he and the state's chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, unveiled a plan that is intended to shorten court delays, cut the jail population and prevent people from being held, sometimes for years, without trial. As of last month, more than 400 people at Rikers had been locked up for more than two years without being convicted of a crime, according to a report on Tuesday in The Times by Michael Schwirtz and Michael Winerip.
The plan can succeed only if judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, corrections officials and other participants in the justice system stop blaming one another for court delays and work closely together to do away with them.
The justice system plan announced this week by Mr. de Blasio and Judge Lippmann calls for judges to prioritize the cases of the 1,500 or so people who have been held for more than a year without being convicted. The goal is to resolve half of those cases within six months. Cases that cannot be disposed of by plea bargain will be assigned a fixed trial date.
For this to work, corrections officials need to get inmates to court at the appointed time and police officers need to show up in court on time. Instead of seeking adjournments and delays, defense attorneys and prosecutors must be prepared and ready to proceed.
Judges who now permit too many unjustified adjournments will need to change the way they run their courtrooms.
Under the plan, each borough will have a dedicated team, led by the county's administrative judge, that will work with operations experts to figure out the causes of court delays. The teams — which will include members from City Hall, the district attorneys' offices, the defense bar and the police — will also monitor progress made on old cases and develop reforms that shorten processing times.
These teams may need to recommend changes to court hours in some places, and should seriously consider putting courtrooms on Rikers Island itself. A separate citywide body will be responsible for putting recommendations into action.
Meanwhile, too many poor defendants can end up waiting in jail for months because they cannot afford bail. State lawmakers could help by changing the bail system and creating a presumption of release for low-level offenders who present no risk to the public. A bill pending in the Legislature, and introduced by Judge Lippman, would address this problem.
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