New York City has agreed to pay up to $21.5 million to people who were held in its Central Booking cells, the holding facilities where people wait after an arrest before seeing a judge. Anyone detained in the covered years can ask for up to $475 for each separate detention, but the window to ask closes Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, according to the settlement website.
Which Central Booking detentions count
The settlement settles three federal lawsuits over conditions of confinement at the city’s Central Booking facilities: Capobianco v. City of New York, Brennan v. City of New York and Aboubakar v. City of New York. They were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The city denied wrongdoing and agreed to settle to avoid the risks and expenses of further litigation, according to Claim Depot, a site that tracks settlements.
Two time periods count. At the Brooklyn Central Booking facility, anyone held between April 8, 2017 and Dec. 27, 2019 is covered. At every Central Booking location in the city, anyone held between Feb. 3, 2020 and March 1, 2023 is covered. A person held on a date outside those ranges, or somewhere other than Central Booking, is not part of the class.
What matters is how many times a person was held. The site says payments of up to $475 are for each time someone was held in a Central Booking facility during the class period, so a person who was held three times in the covered years can file for three detentions.
The Central Booking claim is counted detention by detention, and the form is due Oct. 19. The Settlement & Refund Recovery System lays out the four-date rule for reading a settlement notice and a step-by-step filing walkthrough, so the class years, the Oct. 19 filing date and the Oct. 22 hearing do not get mixed up.
Get the Central Booking filing walkthrough with the Recovery System →
The dates that matter
Claims can be filed online on the settlement website or sent by mail with a postmark of Oct. 19 or earlier. The deadline to opt out or to object was Oct. 5 and has passed. People who file a claim are bound by the settlement, the FAQ page says.
The final approval hearing is Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. at the federal courthouse at 225 Cadman Plaza East in Brooklyn. Checks are mailed only after the court gives final approval, and payments wait until any appeals are resolved. No payment date has been announced.
How much and how it is paid
The city has agreed to pay up to $21,500,000 into a settlement fund. That is a ceiling for the whole case, and the $475 figure is the most a person can receive for one detention. The site does not say what an average payment will be, and Claim Depot says the final amount depends on how many detentions are claimed.
Claim Depot lists attorneys’ fees of up to $2,950,000 from the fund. The class lawyers named there are the Law Office of Scott Korenbaum, Bergstein & Ullrich, the Law Office of Richard Cardinale and Giskan Solotaroff & Anderson.
Payment can come by check in the mail. The claim form also lets a person pick PayPal, Venmo or Zelle, the site says. Claim Depot adds a virtual prepaid card to that list.
What the claim asks
The settlement site does not list a proof requirement on its home page. Claim Depot’s summary shows proof as not applicable, so a person who lost old paperwork may still be able to file. The full rules are in the long form notice on the site, which is the document to read for the exact questions on the form.
The hard part for many people is dates. An arrest from years ago is hard to place, so anything that fixes the year helps: court papers, a desk appearance ticket, a bail receipt or a note from a lawyer. The claim form is where each detention is entered.
Filing before Monday, Oct. 19
The free route is the claim form on the settlement website. The site’s FAQ page repeats the class years and the Oct. 19 deadline, and the contact page on the same site is the place to ask the administrator a question.
Before sitting down to file, it helps to write down each time someone was held in a Central Booking cell, with the approximate date and the borough. Court records, old arrest paperwork and a lawyer’s file can fill in dates. A list made first keeps the form from being filled in from memory.
A mailed claim has to be postmarked by Oct. 19, so anyone using paper should not wait for the last mail pickup. After filing, the next date to watch is the Oct. 22 hearing and the court’s decision on final approval.
Oct. 19 filing date, Oct. 22 hearing
Each detention is its own item in this claim, and a payment that arrives months after the hearing is easy to lose track of. The Settlement & Refund Recovery System includes a step-by-step filing walkthrough and a claim log and payment tracker, so each detention date, the filing and the expected payment sit in one place. It is a 50-page system with the tracker built in.
Set up a claim log for the Central Booking payout with the Recovery System →
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
