The arraignment process just became a whole lot simpler. 

Following Governor Cuomo’s recent signing of a new law, any person awaiting arraignment in Broome County will now be able to be held and arraigned at the Broome County Correctional Facility. 

Previously any person under arrest had to be held and arraigned in the municipality in which they were arrested.

This led to public defenders having to go to one of any of the 20 courts in the county to meet with their client.

Arresting officers also had to wait with the arrestees while they waited for the arraignment. 

Broome County Public Defender Michael Baker says this new law will save time and taxpayer money by improving efficiency for both public defenders and police officers. “We sat down with everybody, the state legislature, the county legislature, how can we do this better without having to hire more people? We came up with this phase 2 which is centralize the arraignment process. Centralizing gives our attorneys a chance to be at one location as opposed to 20 different courts.”Baker says if the Centralized Arraignments was not approved, they would have needed to add 4 public defenders to handle the demand. 

There will be five additional officers hired to work the central booking. 

Also judges now will only be needed twice per day at 8am and 8pm to handle all of the arraignments.