New York Requires Judges to Visit Detention Facilities Each Year

A New York state court system rule requiring criminal and family judges to visit at least one detention facility every year significantly expands a pre-existing rule and may change sentencing and decision policies across the state, criminal defense attorneys and bar groups said.

New York is the first state to implement such a requirement for judges. The new provision, announced Monday, replaces a 1970s-era rule that required family and criminal court judges to visit a prison or jail once every four years. “The reimagined Part 17 aims to deepen judicial insight into incarceration conditions, and to enhance visibility and promote stronger understanding and communication among corrections systems, incarcerated individuals, and the judiciary,” the New York State Unified Court System said in a press statement.

Circulated for public comment in September, the system received more than 150 responses. The “overwhelming majority expressed strong support for this program of enhanced judicial visitation,” it said.

“The former rule was written in a confusing way. It seemed to require visits once every four years, but it didn’t really define what happens at the visits or what the purpose of the visits were, and there wasn’t really a robust system of organizing and documenting and getting input about the visit,” Manhattan Judge Daniel P. Conviser told Bloomberg Law.

“It just struck me that this was such an important thing—visiting these prisons—that it really should be a more robust rule and a more comprehensive approach to how we do this,” the judge said.

Conviser spearheaded development of the new measure with Michael B. Mushlin, professor emeritus of Pace University’s Elisabeth Haub School of Law. They worked for the past four years with experts on the court system’s Criminal Law and Procedure advisory committee.

The rule will apply to more than 160 judges in New York City alone. The Office of Court Administration didn’t immediately respond to a question on how many judges will be affected statewide.

‘Direct Connection’

Judges serving in criminal and family courts will be required to conduct at least one visit per year to a prison, jail, or other facility, including juvenile detention facilities and residential facilities for victims of domestic violence, starting Jan. 1, 2028. They will spend time in key areas, including intake, housing, work education, recreation, visitation, dining, and medical and mental health facilities. Judges will have to visit different facilities every year, rotating between state prisons, local jails, and youth and women’s facilities.

They will also meet facility staff and administrators, and incarcerated individuals—something Conviser said is “the most important part of these visits” as it gives judges “the tiniest bit of direct connection to what it is you’re doing when you’re sitting on the bench, sentencing someone to prison for life or for 20 years.”

New York judges have “extraordinary discretion” in imposing sentences. There aren’t a lot of guidelines or written rules. For example, a first-time offender convicted of first-degree robbery could get anywhere between five and 25 years, Conviser said. That’s why it’s “important to touch the experience of what we’re doing a little bit,” he added.

The rule doesn’t create an oversight role for judges, Mushlin said. It’s meant to provide a “meaningful, workable experience” that allows judges to come away with an appreciation of the impact of their sentencing decisions, he added.

The most difficult part of implementation likely will be the logistics of arranging the visits and getting the judges there, according to Conviser. Judges will need to rework their schedules around these trips.

“The court system leadership, they know this. They’re not going into this in a naive way,” he said. Getting buy-in from everyone involved is also essential going forward, he said.

“We think it’s great that we have 18 months to do it. It’s not that it’s going to be a guaranteed success. All of these things have to work. You have to have a lot of dedicated effort to make it happen,” the judge added.

Mushlin said he’s heard from other organizations around the country, including in Pennsylvania, that this could serve as a model for other states.

Early Support

Leaders of the New York City Bar Association’s Corrections and Community Reentry Committee said they’re “enthusiastic and hopeful” about the impact it will have on the criminal justice system.

It “will help ensure that judges are equipped with the full understanding of the challenges prisons face on a daily basis and in real time,” committee co-chairs Karen Adelman and Paul A. Montuori said in an email. “Afforded such knowledge, every jurist can become a focal point for bringing about necessary changes and also serve as a valuable resource for educating the broader community in its attempt to ensure the state fulfills its obligations of providing humane, constitutional conditions of confinement.”

Defense attorneys inform the courts about detention facility conditions and how they’re impacted by staffing and budget changes, but “judges need to see and hear it themselves,” said Susan C. Bryant, executive director of the New York State Defenders Association.

“We hope judges will embrace this new mandate and the underlying purposes of it, and that we will see changes to pretrial and sentencing decisions and statewide policy in the years to come,” Bryant added.

Yung-Mi Lee, a public defender and past president of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers called the rule a “big step” toward potentially “reducing the jail and prison population and getting judges to also think about the human beings that are being sentenced or are having bail set.”

The Legal Aid Society said it hopes the visits give judges a more complete picture of the effects of their decisions.