Director of Law and Appeals, Yung-Mi Lee, testified before the City Council's Committee on Criminal Justice at an oversight hearing on improving court operations to reduce the jail population. With the Rikers population exceeding 6,600 people and four people having died in Department of Correction custody in 2026, Lee called on the Council to treat pretrial detention as a policy choice, not an inevitability, and laid out recommendations spanning bail reform, discovery compliance, mental health crisis response, and the criminalization of poverty. "The city cannot close Rikers, reduce harm, or honor the presumption of innocence while court actors continue to rely on bail and jail as routine case-management tools," Lee said. Brooklyn Defender Services urged the Council to demand transparent data from courts and prosecutors, invest in community-based mental health treatment and housing, and end the NYPD's reliance on custodial arrests for low-level offenses.
