What are broken windows in a house divided? There were 101,881 minor offense charges against Black New Yorkers in 2016. In 2022, there were just 48,300. Yet Black New Yorkers’ likelihood of facing a low-level offense case compared to white New Yorkers actually increased during that span: from roughly a fivefold in 2016 to around a sixfold in 2022.
The disparity was identified by NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice through data obtained from the New York State Office of Court Administration in findings on misdemeanor enforcement released in March. The gap was the widest in Manhattan, with Black New Yorkers 15 times as likely to face a minor offense compared to white New Yorkers.
But because Black New Yorkers face the most low-level charges, they also see the largest dropoff in raw number cases due to the NYPD’s declining enforcement for misdemeanor crimes, which made up around three-quarters of all citywide criminal cases filed between 2016 and 2022. Minor offense cases cratered by 54% during the span, even with small increase during the post-pandemic years.
“They’re most likely due to the substantial criminal justice reforms in New York City like growing numbers of diversion and court alternative programs,” said the report’s coauthor Josephine Wonsun Hahn. “Which have continued across these administrations’ decriminalization efforts like marijuana, which was decriminalized in 2019 [and] legalized in 2021. We also saw large drops in fare evasion which was moved over to civil summonses in 2018.”
Court alternatives offer defendants charged with low-level offenses a “decline to prosecute” from collaborating district attorneys in exchange for graduating diversion programs like the Midtown Community Justice Center’s Project Reset.
“So they show up to court and instead of going before a judge, and even potentially getting a dismissal, they do a one session program,” said Danielle Mindess, Midtown Community Justice Center’s project director. “[They] can get connected to services or support if they need something and they get a ‘declined to prosecute’…we’re really trying to come up with innovative ways to close the gap and get a preponderance of folks who are eligible for that program the opportunity to to complete it and never have to go before a judge.”
But Mindess says referrals often come from the same judges and defense attorneys. And reaching qualifying individuals can be challenging. The programming expedites a cumbersome process that costs the city between $2,190 to $5,896 in policing and court expenses for each misdemeanor offense. Additionally, alternatives to incarceration cut down on the roughly three months needed to resolve each case, which the report refers to as a “process of punishment” where defendants lose earnings, jobs and housing due to court appearances.
And the “mark of a criminal record” fuels recidivism, even if individuals are not convicted of a felony. The Brennan Center cited another study on Suffolk County—the one in Massachusetts, not Long Island—examining how those who weren’t prosecuted for a nonviolent misdemeanor were 53 percent less likely to be rearrested than those who were prosecuted. In the studied area, which includes Boston, charges are bookkept upon arraignment and accessible to employer background checks even if there is no conviction or guilty plea, says NYU Professor of Politics Anna Harvey, who co-authored the 2021 report.
“One of the things that our work is showing is that even not having a conviction and particularly even for non violent misdemeanors, it still matters both for employer behavior, but also for the way that individuals think employers are going to react—it changes their own behaviors,” said Harvey.
There was also a drastic change in the percentage of low-level offense cases ending in convictions or guilty pleas, from 51% in 2016 to just 25% in 2022. Dismissals skyrocketed from 18% in 2016 to 50% in 2022. Low-level cases resolved by trial, either through a conviction or acquittal, were nominal. Why exactly remains to be seen, says Hahn.
Minor offense enforcement remains consistently prevalent in Black and brown areas like the South Bronx and Upper Manhattan—zip codes in East Tremont/Morrisania and East Harlem rank first and second in minor arrests. Of the white majority neighborhoods with high low-level enforcement like Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, Black and brown people remain the majority of those charged.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.