New York City judges who previously worked as prosecutors or police officers are more likely to detain people following their first court appearances and to set higher bail than judges without a law enforcement background, according to a new study.
The research, which was shared with Gothamist ahead of its broader publication, comes as Mayor Zohran Mamdani is assembling the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary, the group that screens and recommends most of the city’s Criminal Court and Family Court judges.
The committee operated largely out of public view under previous administrations, but Mamdani has laid out new guidelines around transparency and professional diversity.
Taken together, the study and Mamdani’s early moves on judicial appointments highlight how the backgrounds of judges and the largely opaque process that elevates them to the bench shape what happens in courtrooms across the city every day.
“Having this kind of information is important and useful because people come to discussion about crime and public safety from different backgrounds and with different ideas,” said Oded Oren, the executive director of Scrutinize, a judicial transparency group.
Oren co-authored the paper with Chad Topaz, a professor at Williams College and cofounder of the QSIDE Institute, which describes its mission as using data to promote equity and justice.
Oren and Topaz analyzed nearly 70,000 New York City criminal court arraignments, using data the court system made public after recent bail reforms. They categorized the presiding judges according to their professional backgrounds. The primary categories included those with law enforcement backgrounds, those with legal services backgrounds (public defenders or who worked with organizations that serve indigent clients) and those with both or neither.
After crunching the data, they found judges with law enforcement backgrounds were about 4 percentage points more likely to order detention than those without those backgrounds. They also found that when those judges set cash bail, the amounts were roughly one-third higher on average.
While the impact on any given case may sound minor, the authors estimate that the overall effects can be considerable. They estimate that replacing one judge with a law enforcement background would result in 65 fewer detentions and $6 million less in imposed cash bail over a typical 10-year term. It would also mean roughly 17 years of jail time avoided, which would save the taxpayer about $8.7 million in detention costs, according to the study.
The study did not find statistically significant differences among judges who had legal services or public defense backgrounds. Moreover, it doesn’t suggest any policy changes based on the findings, though it does note the findings have “broad relevance for efforts to reduce jail populations.”
“What we try to do with this paper is provide another data point so that we can have a more robust discussion about what is happening in our court system,” Oren said.
The city’s five district attorneys offices either declined to comment on or did not return calls inquiring about the study or Mamdani’s advisory committee.
The study does have some limitations. It can’t say for certain whether a judge’s past job is the reason for their decisions. The data can’t untangle whether people who are already more inclined toward detention are more likely to become prosecutors, for instance, or whether that experience shapes their view once they're on the bench, Oren said.
The analysis also can’t take everything a judge sees at arraignment into account. A prosecutor’s specific bail request or algorithmic flight-risk scores leave open questions about how those factors might weigh on a decision.
The mayor’s office did not return requests for comment on the study or Mamdani's judicial committee, but there are some indications that the mayor is planning to put more emphasis on judicial background as he makes his appointments.
In an announcement about the creation of his advisory committee, the Mamdani administration drew attention to new transparency measures and an executive order mandating that the committee cast a wide net by engaging “public defenders, attorneys who represent parents and children in family court, and those working in indigent legal services” in the selection process.
Mamdani also chose Ali Najmi, a civil rights and election attorney, as the head of the committee.
“I am committed to making our judicial selection process more transparent and inclusive to ensure that all 8.5 million New Yorkers see themselves reflected on the bench,” Najmi said in a statement.
Most of the judges that sit in New York City's criminal and family courts are appointed by the mayor after screening by the committee. But for decades, the committee’s work has unfolded largely behind closed doors. Little has been made public about how many people apply for appointments, who advances through the process or how judges are evaluated for reappointment.
Internal committee policy documents from past administrations obtained by Gothamist describe a process built around strict confidentiality. The policies explicitly state that “all communications” within the committee be “kept entirely confidential,” with deliberations hidden from public view.
That secrecy has fueled concerns among reform groups that judicial appointments could be used to reward political connections rather than merit, a worry only reinforced by the state’s broader history of patronage in its appointed judiciary. Adams also ran afoul of the New York City Bar Association when he booted the organization from the appointment process.
Scrutinize has been among the most vocal critics of that system. The organization released a December report, alongside open government group Reinvent Albany, warning that because the committee is so secretive, “the public cannot tell whether [it] is advancing candidates for their ability or for their connections.”
The group laid out a number of policy changes that could make the process more open, and Oren says Mamdani’s new order addresses some of them. Under his executive order, the committee will release aggregate data about its work, including basic demographic information about applicants and appointees. It will also create a publicly searchable record identifying appointees, their courts and appointment dates.
Still, Oren said those changes offer more of a starting point than a complete overhaul. The order still grants the committee considerable privacy in its decision-making process, and Oren noted there’s no mention of publicly releasing information around when a judge’s term expires or if they are up for reappointment; details for which Scrutinize has had to file formal record requests in the past.
“That’s not something a nonprofit should be doing,” he said. “That’s information that the system itself should be providing.”
The New York City Bar Association did not return requests for comment, and both the state’s district attorney association and the Legal Aid Society declined to comment.
