Last June, the Amsterdam News reported initial findings by the John Jay College’s Data Collaborative that 85 percent of NYPD-issued summons in 2022 disproportionately went to Black and brown residents. The full report was published last March, expanding on the disparities with low-level offense enforcement.
Such findings stem from the city’s official police reform plan, which the department implemented in 2021 in compliance with then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s statewide executive order.
“There were explicit goals in the police reform plan and they were to have lighter-touch enforcement to unnecessary contact with law enforcement or possible violence on minor matters,” said report co-author Michael Rempel. “In addition, there was an explicit goal, [to] reduce any known disparities in law enforcement contact based on people’s race, ethnicity, and income.”
Criminal summons are substituted for arrests if an individual is charged with a lower-level, non-fingerprintable offense. Issuance typically tackles “quality of life” concerns like fighting and disorderly conduct. Police typically move to arrests when enforcing these offenses if a violation arises when identifying the charged person.
Criminal summons differ from desk appearance tickets (DATs), which simply instruct individuals to attend a court date and do not detail formal charges. But both eschew pre-arraignment detention, allowing those issued to return to court on their own. That practice “tends to be heavily discretionary” according to the research, just as DATs are, as reported by the Amsterdam News last month.
White residents received just 8 percent of summons issued citywide between 2020 and 2022. Even in higher-income ZIP codes, Black and brown residents were issued more than 70 percent of the criminal complaints. Lower-income neighborhoods saw the widest disparities, with Black and brown residents receiving 97% of summons in ZIP codes with median incomes under $35,000.
2022 also marked the first increase this decade in summons issuance, jumping from 22,603 in 2021 to 36,621. While the uptick aligns with the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rising numbers notably exclude any mairjuana enforcement, which made up 29% of criminal summons issued just two years previously; marijuana possession was once a prominent charge, but the drug’s legalization led to no summons for that issued in 2022.
Researchers point to specific NYPD precincts in the Bronx and Brooklyn, such as Mott Haven’s 40th, as fueling the increase.
“One of the biggest things that pops out is [that] four of the city’s 77 precincts issued almost 22% of all summonses in 2022, so there’s such a small portion of precincts that are really driving this increase,” said report co-author Anna Stenkamp. “When looking at the neighborhoods based on ZIP codes, you can see that…the top ZIP codes have a majority or plurality Black or Hispanic population.”
The study attributes the previously steady reduction in criminal summons issuance to the Criminal Justice Reform Act (CJRA), which redirected five low offenses, including littering and public urination, from the criminal courts to civil tickets back in 2016.
When the City Council passed the CJRA, nearly 300,000 summons were issued the previous year, with open container violations—one of five offenses reclassified as civil summons by the law—exceeding 96,000. Even with 2022’s aberrant increase, issuance has plummeted dramatically since the early-mid 2010s.
The residual effects of the pandemic on criminal summons are not linear, according to the study. While stay-at-home orders probably led to a decrease in enforcement, the urgency about containing the spread of COVID-19 led to unique offenses for criminal summonses like mask-wearing.
A criminal summons rarely leads to direct carceral penalties: Just 9 percent ended in a conviction in 2022. Meanwhile, 63 percent were dismissed and 28 percent ended in an ACD, which punts the case to a future date but increases the probability of a dismissal should the defendant stay out of trouble. However, penalties are frequently harsh for those charged in what the authors called a “process of punishment,” in which residents have to catch up after lost time and wages from frequent court appearances.
NYPD did not respond to requests for comment.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who 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.