CCA sent a letter to Governor Hochul, signed by over 110 organizations, calling on her to nominate a Chief Judge who will stand up for the rights of New Yorkers.
In this excerpt from the American Bar Association's State of Criminal Justice 2021, Ronald J. Tabak discusses and analyzes recent dramatic developments that may lead to fundamental changes in the future of the death penalty in the United States.
The Compassionate New York agenda outlines immediate actions the state legislature can take to save lives and billions of dollars in the wake of the COVID public health crisis.
The Justice Roadmap is a legislative agenda designed to address the harms caused by the deeply entangled criminal legal and immigration systems. For far too long, our state has failed to provide New Yorkers with affordable housing, quality healthcare and robust educational and economic opportunities. Now is the time for change.
As New York faces a new fiscal crisis, it is critical that funding for urgently needed community-based services not be on the chopping block. Instead, we must commit to decarceration and decriminalization and a corresponding re-allocation of resources from the carceral system back into communities.
In open letters to Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, CCA and other civil and human rights groups call for the creation and maintenance of a publicly accessible online database of correctional officer misconduct and disciplinary records.
Contact tracing asks us to provide public health officials with the most intimate details about our lives. Participation means that a person must share their location information, associations, and health information. If there is any risk that this information can be used by law enforcement or ICE, many New Yorkers will refuse to cooperate with contact tracers. Without an ironclad privacy guarantee, New York will undermine one of our most important tools in combating COVID-19.
By funneling millions of dollars into local and state elections, law enforcement unions and associations secure undemocratic influence over the decisions of elected officials and block desperately needed reform to New York’s racist, cruel, and discriminatory “justice” system.
CCA and other organizations committed to ending racist state violence call on the leaders of the New York State Assembly and Senate to reconvene the legislature in July and pass a slate of bills to peel away at the devastation wrought on Black New Yorkers by a system of mass criminalization and state violence.
The bill explicitly prohibits law enforcement and immigration enforcement agencies and personnel from serving as contact tracers and ensures that contract tracing information stays truly confidential by making it immune from legal process and inadmissible in judicial and administrative actions and proceedings.
