New York’s conviction integrity programs have fallen short of their promise, an investigation by New York Focus and Columbia Journalism Investigations found. Nearly half of them have yet to support a single exoneration. The 12 CIUs outside of New York City — which have been around for an average of six years each and collectively boast three dozen staff members — have only supported 12 exonerations between them.

Interviews with dozens of people and a review of hundreds of pages of government records reveal a CIU system operating almost entirely in secret, with no outside oversight. Most units across the state answer solely to the DAs who created them. Controlled by elected officials, units can become vulnerable to internal pressure to cover up past mistakes. And because there are no legal standards governing CIUs, personnel can commit the same abuses as their colleagues in DAs’ offices — to the detriment of the wrongfully convicted.

Applicants in New York have found the CIU process slow and haphazard, leaving them in limbo, sometimes for years, awaiting a response. More often than not, units denied the applicants identified in this investigation without a review, or rejected them after a reinvestigation without explanation.

In a budget hearing on Wednesday, several Democratic and Republican legislators pressed Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration on its lagging efforts to protect New York’s neediest families from going hungry amid an ongoing rash of thefts.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — formerly known as food stamps — has become a target for thieves who place hidden skimming devices at checkouts.

New York has been among the states hardest hit by SNAP theft. To date, the state has reimbursed $40 million in stolen benefits since 2022. Nearly 3 million New Yorkers used SNAP last year, with the average household receiving $376 in monthly benefits.

Prompted by a New York Focus article last week, Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration is seeking investigations into the mysterious funding behind a $10 million campaign targeting the governor’s plan to remake New York’s home care industry.

As first reported by Gothamist, State Health Commissioner James McDonald sent a letter on Friday to Attorney General Letitia James and Sanford Berland, executive director of the state Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, urging a formal inquiry into “what appears to be a concerted effort to shield who is bankrolling a lobbying campaign to spread misinformation and lies” about the governor’s transition plan.

Before Governor Kathy Hochul released her proposal to once again alter New York’s 2019 criminal justice reforms, her office assured the public that it merely wanted to “clarify,” “streamline,” and “right-size” them.

After pushing through repeated rollbacks to the state’s controversial bail reform law in previous years, Hochul announced last month that she was targeting lesser known but critical reforms that overhauled the process, known as discovery, by which prosecutors must share evidence with the defense in criminal cases. Those reforms made it easier for defendants to see the full slate of evidence against them, giving them more information to build their cases and consider plea deals.