New York is positioned as the first state in the nation to require judges serving in criminal and family court to visit a jail, prison or detention center once a year.<\/p>\n
The Unified Court System says this change is to help judges have a greater perspective into conditions in these facilities and to promote stronger communication, including with those imprisoned.<\/p>\n
The change, which will take effect beginning Jan. 1, 2028, is part of the New York State Unified Court System\u2019s amendments to Part 17 of the Rules of the Chief Judge.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know why it took so long,\u201d said Tina Luongo, the chief attorney of criminal defense practice for the Legal Aid Society.<\/p>\n
They say it\u2019s important for a judge to see first-hand what a facility\u2019s conditions are when a judge holds the power to set bail or remand a person.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about context, right? What the judge doesn\u2019t see is the conditions of confinement that incarcerated people suffer,\u201d said Luongo. \u201cThey don\u2019t see it in the pretrial context, so when a judge sets bail they don\u2019t have line of sight to what the conditions are that this person is about to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the Unified Court System, under the new Part 17, judicial visits will \u201cinclude opportunities for meaningful time in key areas such as intake, housing, work education, recreation, visitation, dining, and medical and mental health facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judges will also have \u201can opportunity to meet with incarcerated individuals, employees, administrators and service providers.\u201d<\/p>\n
An advisory task force will be formed to bring judges, judicial associations, court administrations, correctional and detention facility representatives and other relevant experts together and will include a new judicial orientation and education program.<\/p>\n
\u201cChange happens when you have intentional strong leaders making this push,\u201d said Luongo. \u201cWe have a chief judge in New York state, Chief Judge Rowan Wilson, who makes it a point for himself to go and visit people upstate who are incarcerated.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis rule keeps judges better connected to what transpires after sentencing. It deepens a judge\u2019s firsthand understanding of prison conditions and the broad impact of incarceration on individuals, families, and communities, as well as the opportunities available during incarceration,\u201d said Chief Judge Rowan D. Wilson. \u201cThe revised rule embodies the principle that judges are not distant arbiters but engaged stewards of justice, whose thoughtful determinations are grounded in reality. By doing so, it promotes confidence in the judiciary, not merely in those who are incarcerated or their families, but also in the public at large. Justice may be depicted as blind but should not blind itself to reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
The visits will rotate among facility types including youth and women\u2019s facilities, state prisons and local jails.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York is positioned as the first state in the nation to require judges serving in criminal and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[109,116,3777,9,24,49,12,5304,112,63,87,134,136,135,200],"class_list":["post-270402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","tag-criminal-justice","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-state","tag-news","tag-nicole-neuman","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}