Mayor Adams tempers bail demands with calls to fund public defenders, prosecutors

Mayor Adams tempered his calls for changes to the state’s bail laws Wednesday with a demand that New York also pony up more cash to hire more public defenders and district attorneys to address criminal court backlogs in the city.

During testimony to lawmakers from the state Senate and Assembly, Adams reiterated his support of Gov. Hochul’s budget proposal to give judges more discretion when setting bail — a consistent focus for the mayor over the past year — but he also touched on several other critical criminal justice issues Wednesday, including how gun cases are handled when they involve teen defendants, how shoplifting cases should be prosecuted and the additional tools Adams wants to enforce laws against unlicensed weed shops.

Adams first and foremost focused his attention on recidivism, though, which he’s argued is a result of loopholes in the current state bail laws.

“A disproportionate share of serious crime in New York City is being driven by a limited number of extreme recidivists — approximately 2,000 people who commit crime after crime while out on the street on bail,” Adams said during opening remarks at a joint budget hearing in Albany. “We must also recognize that our city’s district attorneys and public defenders are overwhelmed and need our help immediately. The state must make a major investment in them now or risk depriving defendants of their constitutional right to a speedy trial.”

His calls for more funding for defense attorneys and prosecutors were met with cheers from groups like the Legal Aid Society and others that provide defense lawyers to poor clients and that have been critical of Adams on a variety of issues over the past year.

“Defenders statewide are desperately in need of additional staffing and technological resources to collect, store, access and work with evidence in an increasingly digital era, while at the same time facing an unprecedented staffing and attrition crisis,” Legal Aid and several other groups said in a written statement in response to Adams’ testimony.

And while those groups said they “echo the call” from Adams on increased state funding for defense lawyers, they rejected his support of Hochul’s proposal on bail.

That proposal, which Hochul laid out earlier this month, would amend the 2019 bail reform law. The law did away with cash bail and mandated the release of most misdemeanor and non-violent felony defendants.

Hochul’s proposed change would strip the law of language requiring judges to impose the “least restrictive” bail conditions, a move intended to ensure defendants return to court.

More than once Adams and his team described how that’s a pressing concern when it comes to addressing spikes in crime in the city, especially among a core of violent recidivists.

“They’re eight times more likely not to return to court — a small number of people, disproportionate amount of crime, making a mockery of the reforms that we fought for in the criminal justice system,” Adams said.

Beyond the 2,000 violent recidivists Adams pointed to, his chief counsel, Brendan McGuire, said that more broadly there are about 9,000 “extreme recidivists” in the city who are “exploiting the current system.”

“Those 9,000 individuals, they represent about 8% of the total number of defendants arrested in 2022. Last year, those 8% of people were responsible for 56% of felony burglaries in the city,” McGuire said. “They were also responsible for more than 30% of assaults as well as robberies.”

Adams and his administration did not limit their testimony on criminal justice issues to bail reform and funding lawyers.

Adams, a former NYPD captain and state senator, said during his time in the Senate he fought for criminal justice reforms because Black and brown people were too often unfairly targeted, but said victims of violent crime must also be considered.

In response to a question about the state’s Raise the Age law, which increased the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 18, Adams said defaulting to family court rather than hearing a case in criminal court when it comes to youthful defendants with a history of violence should be reexamined.

“Those extreme violent repeated offenders should be handled in a family court, criminal part,” he said.

Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, said a criminal part does not currently exist in state family court, though. And when asked to clarify his statement, Adams’ spokesman Fabien Levy said the mayor meant to say such cases should be handled in the youth divisions of criminal court.

Adams also suggested that there should be stiffer penalties on the books for repeat shoplifting offenders, but that punishment should be deferred for those with substance abuse problems or who suffer from food insecurity. Still, he criticized those who’ve accused him of seeking to “criminalize the poor,” saying that the workers who lost jobs after stores closed as a result of mass thefts are the ones truly suffering.

“Poor and low income New Yorkers are being unemployed because we’re losing those businesses in the city,” he said.

Adams suggested that tweaks to the state’s laws on unlicensed marijuana dealers working out of storefronts are needed as well, noting that the city currently does not have the “enforcement tools” that would enable city law enforcement officers to properly address the issue.

After speaking to legislators, Adams suggested that his testimony this year differed from the remarks he made in Albany last year so he could better control the narrative when it comes to how the city’s tackling crime.

“I believe we made a big mistake last year that we allowed the narrative to be hijacked to say this was just about bail reform. It is not, it is about a criminal justice system that is broken. We want to fix that entire system and make sure that people get justice,” he told reporters.

“I’m not going to make that mistake we made last year, just focusing on one aspect of it — there’s more to it. Defense attorneys must get the funds they need, prosecutors need the funds that they need. I believe that we should have some form of judiciary discretion. We need to put all these things together.”