Reformists rally against Hochul plan for rollbacks
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Advocates and elected officials condemned a leaked plan from the governor’s office to change a handful of recently enacted justice reforms. Photo via Center for Community Alternatives
By Rachel Vick
A few weeks before the state budget is finalized, advocates and lawmakers rallied at both ends of New York to condemn the alleged plan from Gov. Kathy Hochul to rollback a number of criminal justice reforms.
The 10-point plan, obtained by the Post last week, outlines rollbacks to bail reform, Raise the Age and discovery reforms, which opponents in Manhattan and Albany say are counterproductive to recent justice reform efforts.
Center for Community Alternatives Director of Organizing Marvin Mayfield said the plan would not only “undermine” years of work, but demonstrates that Hochul’s promise to be different from her predecessor fell short.
“This is an unacceptable way to pass legislation. It is also bad policy,” Mayfield said. “The governor’s proposal would have more people languishing in jail for longer, coerced to plead guilty in exchange for their freedom, denied access to evidence in their cases, and more. Ultimately, that means more wrongful convictions, more harm to struggling families, and less safety and justice.”
“The safest communities have the greatest resources, not the highest incarceration rates,” he added.
The leaked plans, which Hochul aims to negotiate into the state’s budget, include giving judges discretion to consider a defendant’s criminal history while requesting bail, expanding the number of charges considered bail eligible and reversing reforms to recently enacted legislation that requires 16- and 17-year olds to be tried as minors instead of as adults.
Over the weekend the New York Civil Liberties Union, Legal Aid Society, Bronx Defenders, Brooklyn Defender Services, Center for Community Alternatives, Envision Freedom Fund, and FWD.us sent a joint memo of opposition to the proposal.
On Monday, Jared Trujillo, policy counsel at the NYCLU, said there are similarities between the reinvigorated call for rollbacks and the historical responses to civil rights victories, including Jim Crow as a response to the expanded agency that came with the reconstruction movement.
“Is this governor going to use her first budget to rollback some of the most important civil rights victories in New York’s history?” he said. “We’re not talking about radical reforms, we're talking about people not being thrown into cages and kept away from their family, their jobs, simply because people like Kalief Browder don't have money.”
Instead, activists recommend renewed commitments to community outreach, funding and support.
Advocates and formerly incarcerated people have received support from members of the state legislature who expressed their own outrage at the memo, denouncing the potential for the changes to be implemented without their input.
Assemblymember Latrice Walker said she would go on a hunger strike to keep the items out of the budget.
The memo came the day a third person died in custody on Rikers Island.
“Governor Hochul and our electeds must not worsen this crisis by sending more people to the deadly jails by gutting bail, discovery, and Raise the Age reforms,” said Victor Pate, the co-director of the HALT Solitary Campaign who was formerly incarcerated on Rikers Island. “What we need our electeds to do is release people. We need treatment not jails.”
At an unrelated press conference Monday, Hochul declined to comment further on the memo, saying that she “doesn’t negotiate in public.”
“The public is aware that I share their concerns about public safety and that’s why we’re working with my team, and working the legislators to craft a position and a policy and work toward getting it in the budget that I believe will respond to the needs of what’s going on right now,” Hochul said. “That’s the approach we’re going to continue taking.”
