{"id":323664,"date":"2026-08-18T02:18:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T02:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/323664\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T02:18:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T02:18:21","slug":"helming-blakeman-tout-risk-assessment-tools-for-judges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/323664\/","title":{"rendered":"Helming, Blakeman tout risk assessment tools for judges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>State Sen. Pam Helming joined law enforcement leaders and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman in Gates on Monday to talk about her sponsored bill \u2014 the <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrumlocalnews.com\/nys\/central-ny\/politics\/2025\/10\/02\/onondaga-county-officials-back-protect-act\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pretrial Risk Overview for Threat Evaluation, Custody, and Treatment Act<\/a>, or PROTECT Act.<\/p>\n<p>Helming introduced the bill last year in response to the state&#8217;s bail laws after she and some law enforcement officials claimed current state law has led to increased crime involving repeat offenders.<\/p>\n<p>She says it would create a standardized risk assessment tool for judges to use for pre-trial custody decisions.<\/p>\n<p>It applies to Class A misdemeanors and felonies.<\/p>\n<p>Helming has said the standardized form would help judges to make an informed decision when someone is charged with a felony or Class A misdemeanor.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I feel very strongly that the PROTECT Act balances the rights of the accused with the rights of the victim, and the need to keep our communities safe,\u201d Helming said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think this is good legislation,\u201d Blakeman said. \u201cThis is well thought out. This is legislation that wasn\u2019t done in a vacuum. Pam went out, talked to her colleagues, talked to law enforcement professionals, talked to community leaders, talked to religious leaders and came up with something that is good old-fashioned common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Helming says the legislation provides some safeguards, including: the chance of release being based on risk, not bail amount; custody hearings being completed within 48 hours and assessments being created by the Department of Criminal Justice to reduce bias.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Recently some of last decade&#8217;s bail reform laws have been rolled back, giving judges more discretion.<\/p>\n<p>Supporters said the original bail reform prevented low-income people from spending excessive time in jail waiting on their case.<\/p>\n<p>The PROTECT Act currently sits in committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"State Sen. Pam Helming joined law enforcement leaders and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman in Gates on Monday&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50,12,112,108,115,380],"class_list":["post-323664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-rochester","tag-spectrum-news-staff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323664","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=323664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}