Last Friday, the CASES pretrial services team wasn’t in court, on the phone or in a cubicle. They were outside, racing each other.
“I got to flex on some of my supervisors who challenged me to a foot race,” said Asa Scott, Borough Director for Harlem Pretrial Services. “You should see the tape.”
The first annual CASES Pretrial Field Day came together for a simple reason: many of the people who make this program run have never had the opportunity to meet. “Everybody you work with just isn’t around the corner anymore, isn’t a couple cubicles away,” said Giles Malieckal, Senior Director of Pretrial Services. Since the department underwent a rapid expansion in 2020 and opened new offices across the city, colleagues might email each other daily without ever meeting in person. The leadership team wanted to create an opportunity for Pretrial staff to connect.
The Inspiration
“Last year I was having a conversation with Giles about how we never have something just department-based,” said Shakira Nova, Senior Project Coordinator for the Pretrial Services department. “A lot of the time, because we’re all located in different offices, we’re never together, besides the CASES holiday parties. So that kind of started a conversation about a pretrial town hall, and then eventually we were like, you know what, let’s have a field day where everyone can come together and just have fun for a day.”
“We saw our staff who at times don’t really get a chance to take a break at work get a chance to inhale and exhale,” said Asa. “We had a moment of meditation as we kind of ground ourselves together in the work that we do, and share stories of why we’re passionate about this work and see each other as human beings.”
For Giles, who started the program with a small team working out of one office, the day had been a long time coming.
“This has really been a dream of mine, to bring everybody together for an opportunity to just be in community with one another,” he said. “I’m a firm believer that people who share space and can listen to each other and can appreciate where they come from are better able to empathize with all the different things that come at us in life. And if we can translate those lessons to our clients who rely and depend on us at really vulnerable points in their life, it can make a huge impact.”
Ten-Year Anniversary
The field day doubled as a milestone. Pretrial services turned 10 this August, having grown from that first small group of clients referred by the Criminal Justice Agency into a department with close to 200 staff across the supervised release program. The Harlem team alone now has more than 80 members.
“I’ve seen the growth based on our data and our numbers, with us starting with just one social worker,” said Asa, who joined in September 2024. “We’ve definitely revamped the way that we’ve done services, but have also grown in the scope of how far our reach has been.”
Ask what a day looks like she told us that there isn’t one.
“No one day is the same,” Asa said. “One day we’re in court advocating fiercely for an individual. Other days our social workers are providing clinical assessments. Other days we have our ISU team in the community meeting someone who’s living homeless on the street and providing them with much-needed services to get them into court. It’s always a puzzle, and that’s one of the things that we love about the work.”
Her team runs on what she calls the three C’s. “Compliance, compassion and competency,” she said. “We’re going to do it well. We’re going to do it with care, and we’re going to do it within the letter of the law to make sure we’re meeting our statutory requirements. That’s why we’re the best.”
Supporting Mental Health
Hayward Mouton, Clinical Director for Pretrial Services, put a number on why clinical care sits at the center of the model.
“About 90 percent of our participants have some form of mental health need,” said Hayward. “Some are previously diagnosed and some are not diagnosed. But in general, it can be stressful being in the court system. It can be traumatic being arrested, being incarcerated. Your rights are taken away from you. And so that in itself can cause added stress.”
His job is making sure staff have the tools to meet participants where they are, including those who aren’t yet sure they want anything to change.
“They might be in that pre-contemplation stage, which means they might not want to make the change,” he said. “We make sure the staff is able to support them regardless, and let them know we’ll be here for them when they’re ready.”
Asked why he does this work, Hayward didn’t hesitate. “I always like to work for people that are considered the underdog. I always want people to win, and that winning could look different for different people. It could be a job at McDonald’s, it could be a master’s degree, it could just be a goal to show up to all their appointments this week. Whatever it is, I just want somebody to win.”
What they wish you knew
Every interview ended with the same question: What do you wish people understood about this work?
“People are innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent,” said Hayward. “These are human beings, and we must treat them with dignity and respect, because it could be your mom, it could be your brother, it could be your sister, your cousin. And you would want someone to treat them with that level of care. Our work is important because we bring humanity to those the world has deemed damaged.”
Asa framed it as a matter of reach. “When someone gets a criminal justice charge, it’s never just that person. It impacts their whole family, and sometimes the legacy within their family,” she said. “So this is our ability to interrupt that train and create a moment of change that can actually have a long-standing legacy of impact.”
Shakira, who doesn’t work directly with participants but coordinates the workflows that shape their experience, pointed to her colleagues.
“They really care about their participants. They put in all of their effort, their empathy, their life experiences,” she said. “I think that makes the team different, but it also brings them together in a way that they can connect with participants.”
That, in the end, was the point of an afternoon outside. Giles said what he’s proudest of after 10 years isn’t a metric, it’s the wide range of paths his staff took to get here. Earlier that same day, he’d talked with one staff member about her experience in prison and another about studying criminal justice in school.
“It really shows that there’s so much value in different experiences,” he said.
As for whether the field day comes back: “Everyone said it was successful, which I love to hear,” Shakira said. “I’m looking forward to hopefully planning another one next year.”
