to the magistrate, who considers it while setting a bond amount.

Commissioner James Carter was one of seven speakers giving favorable reviews of the insitute’s relatively young program during a discussion before the City Council’s Criminal Justice Committee.

Carter said the city will put $623,000 into the proposed 2013 budget.for Vera.

The nascent program got off the ground in April with a city budget of $200,000. An additional $463,000 in one-time seed money was provided by the U.S. Department of Justice. That money was used to help design the program, a process that began in early 2011, said Jon Wool, the Vera Institute’s New Orleans director.

Wool said the increase from the city will help Vera expand its reach to include arrestees brought into the system on state misdemeanor charges.

Vera would begotten me to accept it. It’s working out excellent,” Lee said.

Carter made a point to mention the city’s homicide crisis and noted that the assessments would also give judges the discretion to issue “harsh bonds” in order to keep people accused of violent felonies off the street.

“This is an effort to focus on risk,” Wool said, “both at the high and the low end. Both ends are equally of concern.”

Tom Gogola covered criminal justice for The Lens from February 2012 to May 2013. He is a veteran journalist and editor who has written on a range of subjects for many publications, including Newsday, New York, The Nation, and Maxim. Gogola was a 2011 winner of the Hillman Foundation Sidney Award, for his groundbreaking report in New York magazine