20210603-125103-74

In January 2021, when newly elected district attorney, Miriam Rocah, took over the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office (“WCDAO”), she set forth an ambitious agenda, calling for a “Community First” approach to reforming her office that would seek much greater use of community-based social services rather than the traditional responses of confinement and conviction.
The WCDAO serves a population of nearly one million, that includes six cities, 15 towns and 22 villages. The DA’s Office has jurisdiction over all criminal matters involving people, 18 years and older, arrested by the police; it also presents cases involving juveniles charged with felonies. The DA’s office staff of 238 people is comprised of 119 Assistant District Attorneys, 34 investigators and 85 support personnel, which makes the WCDAO the largest local prosecutorial agency in New York State, north of New York City.
To address behavioral health issues confronting justice-system, Westchester County has three problem-solving courts: A mental health court, a drug court, and a recently launched veterans’ court, all offering individualized social services as alternatives to incarceration and, in some cases, instead of conviction. (Several young adult court parts are about to launch, as well.) Unfortunately, enrollment and participation in each of these courts is extremely limited relative to the county’s criminal justice populations, in large measure due to restrictive enrollment criteria, and outdated program obligations and duration, sanctions and compliance requirements, and completion incentives.
It became apparent even during the transition that these problem-solving courts have been significantly underused and that the DA’s Office could help greatly expand enrollment and enhance their appeal to and use by defendants. Examples of overly restrictive policies include difficult access to the county’s drug and mental health courts for people who have co-occurring disorders; mental health court eligibility that is limited to felonies, but excludes appropriate misdemeanors, even when defense counsel is amenable; and extensive drug court obligations that fail to account for the impact of significant statewide bail reform legislation enacted in 2019.
Although these courts fall under the jurisdiction of the New York State Unified Court System and are led by judges from Westchester’s courts, the county prosecutor has played a significant role in their underuse by setting (a) the parameter for offers involving participation in a problem-solving court, and (b) the obligations, and the terms for success, compliance, and failure. Following a core recommendation of DA Rocah’s Transition Committee, the Westchester DA’s Office now is embarking on an assessment of its practices and protocols with respect to these existing problem-solving courts to determine how to collaborate much more closely with the judiciary, the defense bar, and the local service providers, including the county mental health agency, the Westchester Department of Community Mental Health. This assessment and the underlying initiative seek to create much more robust problem-solving courts, ones that maximize their capacity and opportunity, that improve the response to offending by the county’s justice system, and that can serve as a model for best practice by prosecutors elsewhere.