How Do We Make Our Communities Safer?
A perusal of headlines, news stories, and other media coverage might lead one to believe that more police, longer prison sentences, and harsh imposition of bail leads to community safety. Is there another way to look at this? Legislators in Albany and advocates for thoughtful and humane reforms are looking at the issue through a more nuanced lens. They believe that meeting people’s needs for food, shelter, education, mental health resources, and jobs plays a big role in making all of us safe. Add to that the fair application of just laws and true rehabilitation in our jails and prisons, and true community safety need not be just a dream.
What are the tools that legislators and advocates are using? The current menu of legislation offers insight. Let’s start with the 13th Forward Campaign. According to this campaign, “An insidious form of slavery still exists in New York State. The 13th Amendment ended chattel slavery, but with an insidious exception: ‘as a punishment for a crime.’ This loophole has allowed New York to build a prison system so dependent on human exploitation and degradation that it is akin to modern day slavery.”
This ambitious effort aims to pass a constitutional amendment that would abolish slavery in all its forms in New York State. (Remember Ava Duverney’s movie, 13th about prison labor?) The first step is to pass the No Slavery in NY Act (S.308/A.3142) and the Fairness and Opportunity for Incarcerated Workers Act (S.416A/A.3481B). Because the No Slavery in New York Act would amend our state constitution to abolish modern-day slavery, it requires passage in two consecutive legislative sessions, after which it will appear on the ballot as a referendum.
The Communities not Cages Campaign also has ambitious goals. This effort includes a package of bills: Eliminate Mandatory Minimums Act (S.7871- Myrie / A.9166 - Meeks), the Second Look Act (S.7872- Salazar / A.8894- Walker) to allow judges to review and reconsider excessive sentences; and the Earned Time Act (S.7873A - Cooney / A.8462B- Kelles) to strengthen and expand “good time” and “merit time” laws to encourage personal transformation in prison and reunite families. In the words of the campaign, “We are fighting to win legislation that will decarcerate New York’s prisons, interrupt the abusive power of prosecutors, and build the power of Black, brown, working class and poor communities most impacted by injustices within the criminal legal system.”
The tagline of The Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP) campaign pretty much sums up their mission: “If the risk is low let them go.” Their legislation includes The Fair & Timely Parole Act (S7514/A4231A) which would create a fairer parole determination process that looks to who a person is today, and The Elder Parole Bill (S15A/A8855) which would create opportunities for case-by-case consideration for parole release for people classified by DOCCS as older adults who have served at least 15 consecutive years on their current sentence.
What these campaigns have in common is the belief that by decarcerating our jails and prisons, making “punishment” truly rehabilitative, and investing instead in our Black, Latino, and low wealth communities, we can promote genuine community safety, community control and collective wellbeing.